Secretary of State under GWB part 2

There has been much talk about Colin Powell and battles that he may or may not have had to fight as a relatively moderate and fiercely principled member of the most extreme and unprincipled presidential administration in US history. The scuttlebutt is that Powell will not choose to endure another four years of having his portfolio appropriated by the State Department or the AEI. Michael Ledeen of the National Review, a neoconservative rag, has a recommendation for Secretary of State. The Sec of State is the nation's top diplomat. You need someone with a cool head, who can bring people together to find common ground. Someone who will vigorously defend America's interests, while promoting them to our friends and foes alike by using the carrot and the stick. Someone who will be respected and respectable; someone who will represent America as an optimistic place of hope, freedom and democracy. Someone like, apparently. Zell Miller. You cannot make this stuff up, folks.

State: I have just returned from a couple of weeks in Europe, and was very surprised to hear diplomats complaining bitterly that they felt abandoned by Powell. 'Where is he?' they lamented, 'we supported him and he left us to fend entirely for ourselves.' The proper care of allies is right up near the top of a secretary of State's mission, and the allies don't give Colin Powell a passing grade. For that alone, he needs to go. There are other reasons, too, above all his weasely performance on Iran (every strong presidential statement was instantly followed by leaks from State undercutting the president's words; the secretary's deputy - and best friend - Richard Armitage called Iran 'a democracy,' which may be the great mal mot of this administration). Finally, there's Powell supine acceptance of Foggy Bottom's conventional wisdom on every subject, forgetting that the foreign service isn't supposed to make our foreign policy; it's supposed to carry out the president's policies. Who should replace him? Zell Miller.

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