U.S. Retains Role as World Leader, Says Colin Powell : Speech: Before 4,000 at Cal State Fullerton fund-raiser, ex-general gives anecdotes on his career and his hopes for the nation.

Colin Powell extolled the new world order before an enthusiastic crowd of Cal State Fullerton patrons Thursday night.

Roughly 4,000 people gave the retired Army general a standing ovation before his keynote remarks at the Pond of Anaheim, which highlighted a fund-raiser expected to generate $300,000 in scholarship money.

“The world is moving toward a brighter future, in my judgment, and America will continue to be the leader of this world that wants, wants so deeply to be free.”

Powell spoke for 45 minutes about the fall of communism, the dissolution of apartheid and the easing of tensions in the Middle East, all events in which he played a part as Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and as George Bush’s national security advisor.

Powell recounted a tense meeting in the Soviet Union with then-Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the final days of that government. Gorbachev looked him in the eye and said, “General, I’m very sorry, you’ll have to find a new enemy.”

“I thought to myself, ‘Don’t want to. What did I do to you? You have a bad year and I have to change?’ ”

Gorbachev was a reformer, but he eventually discovered that “you can’t reform a lie; you can’t reform a loss of faith,” Powell said.

Powell alluded obliquely to his controversial decision last year not to run for president, after some Cal State Fullerton students performed a song-and-dance number about “Powell mania.” A visibly flattered Powell quipped, “If I’d seen something like that before my recent decision, I don’t know. . . .”

The former general noted that Operation Desert Storm began five years ago this week and called it “a great victory. We accomplished the mission we went in to accomplish.”

He said he had been anxious to see how the American people would respond to the war and was gratified by their support.

But, he added, “I’m the first general in history who ever had to fight a war with three reporters in a hotel in the enemy’s capital telling everybody how I was doing. I kept picking up the target list and thinking, ‘That darn hotel has got to be on here somewhere.’ That is a joke.” Analyzing recent trends in American politics, Powell said that the American attention span has shrunk.

“The American people are channel surfing, guys. They took a look in ’92 and said we’re gonna change. They took a look in ’94 and said we’re gonna change. This will be a fascinating period watching all of this unfold.”

He said the skirmishes in Washington between President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich are merely a continuation of revolutions around the world to which he has been a witness and often a participant.

“The power of market economics, the power of democracy, the power of people in a democratic society is now being understood around the world, and we should be very proud of this new world that’s emerging. . . .” he said. “What you’re seeing in Washington now is a domestic revolution of sorts taking place.”