At a Sunday night live broadcast of KCRW's "Left, Right and Center" an audience member asked the panel (Tony Blankley, Bob Scheer, Matt Miller and Arianna Huffington) what role they thought Colin Powell should play in the new Obama Administration. Surprisingly, three of the panelists, including the Proprietress, allowed themselves to say that Powell had not paid sufficient penance, shown sufficient remorse, for his role in paving the way to the Iraq War. Blankley, expressing surprise at the near-unanimous disdain, suggested Powell for Secretary of Education, an interesting choice considering that conservatives used to advocate shutting down that department.
Me, I've long foreseen a more useful role for the tainted patron saint of failed wars. A couple years ago, when New Orleans was pondering its inability to motivate the political class to take seriously the city's dual needs--a full investigation of the design and construction flaws (and other problems) that led to the Katrina-related flooding, and a comprehensive program of flood protection and wetlands restoration to prevent a recurrence--I thought Colin Powell would be the perfect replacement for the then-incumbent Gulf Recovery Czar. Surely you remember the Czar. (Hint: Donald Powell, no relation) The pairing of a wounded city seeking national empathy and a fallen hero seeking redemption seemed to me sort of perfect.
It still does. The city, still wounded, hopes not to fall below Rwanda on the nation's to-do list, and General Powell, still tainted, could use a cause bigger than just making us forget photos of mobile bioweapons vans. Sunday's Times-Picayune reminds us that Bush's Gulf recovery office goes out of business in February, and it reminds us why that office was so ineffectual:
(It) was hamstrung, the two officials said, because the president didn't give it the authority to command or overrule recalcitrant federal agencies.
"The most important thing, whether you keep the office going or appoint a coordinator, is to have the president let it be known that the person is speaking for him and has the authority to get things done," said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In other words, do what President Bush promised in Jackson Square that he would do. General Powell would carry that authority among a bureaucracy possibly not burdened with memories of certain UN appearances. President-elect Obama could do both New Orleans and Powell a favor.
PS: For commenters crass enough to suggest that New Orleans deserves inattention because Dollar Bill Jefferson might still be re-elected, three words: Senator Ted Stevens.
