NEWS ANALYSIS : Sense of Loss Follows Powell’s Decision : Presidency: Many had looked to former general to help bridge racial divisions. Now, there is a feeling the troubled nation will be set back even further.

Against the backdrop of the nation’s fraying race relations, Colin L. Powell’s decision not to seek the White House looms as a provocative moment, imbued with an overriding sense of lost opportunity and impossible expectations.

While many white and black Americans praise Powell for his ability to bridge racial divisions, some express unconcealed disappointment that his failure to run will set back an already troubled country.

Others suggest the retired four-star general, the first black man to direct the nation’s entire military complex, would have been enormously frustrated trying to live up to competing racial expectations symbolized by his presidential campaign and, if successful, his Administration.

Yet analysts and political observers, pointing to growing anecdotal evidence of a souring of the nation’s race relations, agree on one point: Powell’s decision not to run represents a lost opportunity for perhaps the only political leader who might have risen above the finger-pointing and name-calling that so often collide in public debates on racial issues.

“I think there are a lot of us who are disappointed because what he represented was the better side of our nature,” said David Bositis, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that tracks issues of primary interest to black Americans. “If successful, he would have at least represented a case to be made for equal opportunity in American society and an argument that the sky is the limit for anybody in the country.”

But Joseph P. McCormick II, a political science professor at Howard University, strongly disagreed. Noting that his own feelings were mixed because he would have liked to see Powell run, he said he feared Powell surely would have tarnished his sterling image by failing to crawl through the minefield of high expectations set by black and white Americans.

“Those who think Colin Powell can close the racial divide do not have a fundamental understanding of the racial divide in America,” said McCormick. “No one person will close the racial divide because problems surrounding race are too deep-seated and they are beyond this messianic complex we have of the perfect leader. At best, what Colin Powell was going to do was make us feel good.”

McCormick said a precedent exists for the unrealistic expectations that would have greeted Powell the moment he became a candidate. “He would be the focus of a public relations splash that would make waves for the United States across the world,” he said. “But very quickly he would find himself in a very untenable position. He would be faced with the same kind of expectations that first-term black mayors faced in the late 1960s and through the ‘70s, and that the heads of African nations discovered in the 1950s. Even Nelson Mandela is facing it in South Africa. It’s the expectation that he’s going to make things right for black people, and that can’t be done so simply as electing a black man.”

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Such expectations may have been among the unstated reasons Powell opted out of the presidential sweepstakes, saying he forced himself “to look deep into my own soul, standing aside from the expectations of others.”

It was not the first time he expressed himself in this vein.

In his autobiography, he made it clear that he would not seek the White House to provide surrogate therapy for the nation’s racial Angst . “I would certainly not run simply because I saw myself as the ‘Great Black Hope,’ providing a role model for African Americans or a symbol to whites of racism overcome,” Powell wrote in “My American Journey.”

But even his written and oral protestations failed to stop his most vocal supporters from citing his impact on race relations as a primary benefit of a Powell-for-President campaign.

“I’m saddened because of what might have been,” said Charles J. Kelly Jr., a white, retired finance manager who headed a draft-Powell committee. Seated in the audience during Powell’s announcement Wednesday, Kelly shook his head sadly when Powell waved and gestured to say he would call soon. “He could have done so much to bring the country, blacks and whites, together,” Kelly said.

Another of Powell’s cheerleaders, Bill Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard, repeatedly argued in the pages of his conservative political magazine that Powell was a unique figure because his race, values and popularity would have allowed him to spread “a broadly conservative cultural” message to black Americans that can’t be offered by white politicians.

Some black people, like James Ferguson at the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation, say they resented the “media-driven” suggestion that Powell could be used to deliver white America’s sermon of responsibility to black audiences.

“I’m not so sure that could have happened,” said Ferguson, who is executive director of the umbrella organization for several grass-roots political concerns. “His makeup is that he was going to be fiscally conservative and socially moderate. That plays well to a small degree in the African American community as well as among whites.”

(A Times Poll before Powell announced his decision found that among people identifying themselves as social liberals and fiscal conservatives, 71% would either definitely vote for the former general, or would consider doing so.)

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On the truly explosive issues--abortion, affirmative action, federal government spending priorities--Powell would have been in combat with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Ferguson said.

“They would have come after him and, if he wanted to get the party’s nomination, he would have had to moderate his views,” he said. “That’s when the Powell campaign might have had to choose between black support and white support. Then the whole thing would become divisive for the nation in terms of race relations.”

Still others, such as Pam Shaw, a Baltimore attorney and activist in black community concerns, doubted whether Powell would represent issues she supported. Comparing Powell to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, with whom she more closely identifies, Shaw turned to the vernacular to express her sense of who has black people’s interests at heart: “I know Farrakhan’s got my back, but I’m not so sure Colin Powell has my back.”

Nevertheless, a great many black and white Americans still believe--despite his decision not to run--Powell is the best person to be elected President next year. According to a CBS News poll of 744 adults called after Powell’s announced decision, 71% said they still had a favorable image of him and 27% still wanted him in the race.

Typical of those who continue to support Powell is Pat King, a Georgetown Law School professor and activist in black social issues. She said it would be great if someone with broad public support like Powell could run for President and reduce the importance of race in political life.

“I know he wouldn’t have solved all the race problems or ended racism any more than other black leaders have,” she said. “I wanted him to run because he might have won and that would have taken some of the stings out of whatever racism remains in this country.”