Powell Carefully Shines His Political Star : Politics: By refusing to rule out a ’96 White House bid, he fuels speculation.

The standing-room-only crowd overflowing Trinity University’s Laurie auditorium here Monday night was one of the biggest anyone could remember. The star attraction was Colin L. Powell, the big issue was whether he would run for President in 1996.

And when a member of the audience put the question to him directly, Powell answered with Delphic aplomb: “There is no real passion in me to run for office. But I don’t want to rule it out.”

Given the 57-year-old retired Army general’s utter lack of political experience and organized support, the likelihood of his becoming the 43rd President and the first African American to hold that office might seem slight right now.

But Powell’s elevated standing in public opinion surveys and the turbulent state of national politics make Washington insiders reluctant to discount such an outcome to next year’s campaign.

Intentionally or not, Powell himself has fueled the speculation--tantalizing the political community as he did in his talk here by disclaiming interest in a political career on one hand and on the other refusing to flatly close the door.

Last December, for example, after 1992 Democratic aspirant Paul E. Tsongas boosted Powell as a possible independent presidential candidate in 1996, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called him to ask with mock indignation: “What are you trying to do to my life?” Yet Powell, who previously had sought and received a copy of Tsongas’ memorandum making the case for a third party, notably did not ask Tsongas to stop using his name.

By disdaining interviews while he labors on his memoirs (scheduled for publication in September), Powell has benefited from the contrast between his own reputation for restrained, responsible competence and the clamorous striving of most of the acknowledged aspirants for the presidency.

But it is not just his eye-popping poll ratings that fuel the political pros’ interest in a Powell candidacy for national office. Of more fundamental importance are two troublesome factors that now weigh heavily in the political mix:

First, pervasive citizen discontent with the established political order has fostered enthusiasm for outsider Powell as what University of North Carolina historian William Leuchtenburg calls “a purifying force.”

And Powell’s rhetoric seems well suited to reinforce that notion. “We need to stop shouting at one another,” he exhorted his listeners at Trinity. “We need to stop filling our homes with filth. We need to start having a sense of outrage at some of the things that are happening in our society that we take for granted.”

Second, frustration with the centuries-old American dilemma of race enhances Powell’s appeal as a leader who could offer reassurance to whites and hope to blacks.

Just a few days before Christmas, Powell visited Lorton prison in the District of Columbia and talked for nearly three hours with about 300 longtime inmates, nearly all African Americans.

“He delivered a very powerful and a very encouraging message,” said Margaret Moore, director of the district’s Department of Corrections.

Much of what Powell said was drawn from his own life experiences. Training in the South in the late 1950s, the young officer had to confront the overt racism common to that time, but he nevertheless persevered and rose rapidly.

“He told us that some other lieutenants told him, ‘You’re pretty good for a black guy,’ ” said Bobby Morgan, one of the Lorton inmates. “But he said to himself: ‘That’s not good enough for me. I want people to respect me for being a good lieutenant. Period.’ ”

Powell’s career was aided by his two tours in Vietnam, where he earned the Purple Heart and later the Soldier’s Medal when, after extricating himself from a helicopter crash, he limped back to the wreckage with a broken ankle to rescue his commanding general and three other men.

Selected as a White House fellow in 1972, Powell caught the eye of Casper W. Weinberger, then President Richard Nixon’s budget director. That was the beginning of a series of promotions culminating in his appointment as national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President George Bush.

The significance of this rise is of course closely intertwined with Powell’s race. Many think that his ability would have earned him four stars regardless of his color. But because of his race, his rise took on extra meaning, not just for blacks but for white Americans too.

“I bet there are some white people who like Colin Powell in part because he’s a black person with whom they can identify and feel comfortable,” said Randall Kennedy, Harvard law professor and editor of Reconstruction, a journal of black politics and culture.

For blacks, Kennedy said, Powell’s rise is more complicated. “Some people say he is just a token and complain that he is too conservative. But I think the masses of black people would rally around Colin Powell if he were to run for office. He may be conservative, but he never seems to have run away from his blackness.”

Certainly that seemed to be the reaction among the Lorton inmates, who swarmed around Powell at the end of his talk, seeking his autograph.

“A lot of people thought he was something of an Uncle Tom,” said Morgan, who is serving 15 years to life for armed robbery. “But after seeing him and experiencing his genuineness, they realized he was a sincere individual.”

Powell won them over by responding to their often plaintive questions with a blend of candor and sensitivity. Asked how they could keep the love of children they rarely saw, Powell recalled the absences forced by his soldier’s duty from his own home. He has three children.

“He told us you don’t necessarily have to be home all the time to be a positive influence on your children,” said Morgan, who has a 6-year-old daughter. “He said that even when he was away from his own children, they knew they loved him.”

Republicans, in particular, have looked at Powell’s potential biracial appeal and dreamed of having him on their national ticket in 1996 as presidential nominee--if the nominating convention should deadlock--or, more plausibly, as vice president.

Some GOP strategists calculated that putting Powell on the ticket as vice president would transform the election into a slam dunk for their party by assuring them of substantial inroads in the normally huge advantage Democrats enjoy among black voters.

For all those reasons, a Powell candidacy has considerable appeal. But it also faces immense difficulties.

Powell is a registered independent in his home state of Virginia, and even his closest friends swear that they do not know in which of the two major parties he would be most comfortable--let alone how he views contentious issues.

Everyone concedes that Powell is bound to lose some of his far-flung support once he starts taking sides on a range of touchy subjects, from abortion rights to the conflict between environmental safeguards and economic growth.

“The day he has the most supporters he will ever have is the day he announces his candidacy,” said veteran Republican consultant Eddie Mahe.

Then too, some question whether combat veteran Powell has a hide thick enough and reflexes quick enough to withstand the withering personal scrutiny common to presidential political battlefields.

The case of an earlier war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower, is the obvious example cited by those who claim that a military man can succeed at the highest political levels.

But politics, especially presidential politics, was a very different business when the GOP nominated Eisenhower in 1952. Political leaders had far more ability to manipulate the process. And the presidential primaries, which are now decisive, were then little more than “demonstration exercises,” according to Eisenhower scholar Fred Greenstein of Princeton University.

Eisenhower agreed to have his supporters enter his name in the New Hampshire primary, which he won. But the general did not return to the United States from his post as North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander until June of the election year, after nearly all the primaries were over. His climb to the nomination, Greenstein said, “was a little bit like getting pregnant by osmosis.”

For Powell, taking the primary route to the nomination would mean contending with difficulties that Eisenhower never had to face and for which some doubt he has the stomach.

That is one reason many Powell admirers have thought in terms of a third-party or independent run.

Powell seemed to lend a measure of credibility to that notion in a speech last November in Cleveland. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that he said a third party in 1996 would be “wonderful,” adding: “It would be terrific for the American people to have more choices.”

Apart from his renown, Powell would bring considerable political gifts to such an endeavor, some honed during the course of his military career.

His tour as national security adviser in the Reagan White House showed that Powell had a grasp of both the style and substance of diplomacy.

As an orator, Powell lacks the dramatic flair of a George S. Patton or a Douglas MacArthur. But his direct, unaffected manner and self-deprecating humor captivate audiences on the lecture circuit, where Powell’s trim, erect figure has been a frequent sight since his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in September, 1993.

On the first morning of his new civilian life, he recalled for the Trinity audience, he told his wife, Alma, that he was ready to begin his duties as a “full-time spouse.” She supposedly retorted: “You can start right now. The sink is stopped up.”

The better part of Powell’s prepared speech at Trinity appeared to be a preview of his memoirs.

For the bulk of his Army service, Powell noted, U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were designed to achieve what was then described as “containment” of the threat from the Soviet Union. “We had a national security strategy that was understandable,” Powell said, one that an infantry officer like himself could easily grasp.

He recalled a summit conference around that time in which then-Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev tried to persuade President Reagan and other U.S. officials that he was sincere about ending the arms race with the United States.

At one point, Gorbachev told the President and his advisers, Powell remembered: “I am ending the Cold War.” Then Gorbachev turned to Powell and said: “General, I am very sorry, but you will have to find a new enemy.”

Powell said he thought to himself: “But I don’t want to.” He said he felt like asking Gorbachev: “Can’t you wait a couple of years until I am retired?”

Powell is no slouch dealing with small groups, either.

After a small dinner for Princeton faculty and graduate students, which Powell addressed, Greenstein was struck by the fact that, in answering questions from an audience of about 30 people, to whom he had just been introduced, Powell called them all by name.

It was the sort of thing for which Hubert H. Humphrey was famous, Greenstein said. “He (Powell) showed a lot of political skill.”

As for Powell’s ability to respond to a crisis, fresh evidence of the former general’s proficiency was provided last September when he served as part of the three-man negotiating team that paved the way for peaceful entry of U.S. troops in Haiti.

“It was a team effort,” said one well-placed source who insisted on anonymity, describing Powell’s mission with former President Jimmy Carter and Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. “But if anyone was the key to it, Powell was it. He read the order of battle to those guys (Haiti’s military rulers) and told them what was going to fall on them if they didn’t make a deal, and they got the idea.”

For all of that, some question Powell’s fitness to lead a political insurgency because he does not seem angry enough. Democratic consultant Michael Ford, who was an adviser to the outsider presidential campaign of former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. in 1992, said that Brown’s backers--like voters for Ross Perot--were motivated chiefly by “anger and disgust” with the political system.

“If Colin Powell is going to run as an independent, he has to motivate people outside the system,” Ford argued. “What would he bring to the table?”

One thing seems clear: Unlike some independent candidates in the past, Powell would not appeal to ideologues on either the left or the right. Judging from his rhetoric, he is a centrist. “The American people . . . are looking for a different kind of government, a less intrusive government but a government that still cares enough to take care of the most serious problems of society,” he contended here this week.

“Now that I am retired (from the Army) and traveling around the country, I expect I will develop a political philosophy,” Powell said in his talk on the Trinity campus. “Time will tell whether I find that my personal philosophy fits one or the other of the two major parties or whether I just remain independent. I think it important for me to have something I believe in rather than have my beliefs fit a party just for the purpose of saying I belong to it.”