The Republican I have for a long time hoped would run for president, retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, today endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States.
I have always found General Powell to be an unusually thoughful, well-considered, and psychologically balanced man. To me, the rationale he offered for his endorsement, which he announced today to Tom Brokaw on NBC’s Meet the Press, embodied those qualities.
While I remain unswervingly transpartisan in my political orientation, and I never ever base my perspective on one person’s input or one political party’s ideology, Colin Powell is on my short list of those who have devoted their lives to government service.whose opinions I look to as part of formulating my own perspectives.
Here is the video of his announcement, uncut and in its entirety. I propose that you listen less to who he has endorsed and more to the factors he considered in determining who he endorsed. The reason I propose this is because I believe Powell role models in this video the kind of thoughtful and thorough consideration that all voters have a responsibility to do as citizens in deciding which candidate fits we choose to support.
This gives me another opportunity to reiterate what I said in my free Voter Savvy Course: I am not concerned with who you vote for, but rather with educating you in how to make your selection based on facts rather than spin, and based at least in part on your evaluation of how well-developed you believe the transpartisan leadership integrity qualities are in each candidate.
This all said, here is the video of General Colin Powell’s announcement in its entirety:
