THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 30, 1995 TAG: 9510300116
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
What a strange quandary for the Republican Party! Polls show Colin Powell beating Bob Dole for the GOP nomination in 1996, then defeating President Clinton. Dole, as of now, trails Powell and Clinton.
Other candidates are nearly no-shows. So, are the Republicans hitching up a band wagon for Powell?
GOP moderates are hunkered down, mute. Right-wing hand-wringers, even as they say Powell is a wonderful fellow, are flinging up a barrage of flak to discourage him from running, which, inch by inch, he is setting out to do.
Bellicose Pat Buchanan bellows, as if he owns it: ``I say to Colin Powell, come into this race if you want, but you are not going to take this party back to the days of Rockefeller Republicanism because we aren't going to let you!''
What possessed Powell to style himself a Rockefeller Republican is baffling; but some Republicans may recall that, instead of the Rock, they followed Richard Nixon, who plunged the country deeper into Vietnam and dragged it through the sewers of Watergate.
Buchanan also asserts that Powell has been puffed up by the media - of which Buchanan is a member when he is not on the hustings, flitting back and forth, batlike, in a questionable nether world.
Columnists offer views; the main press tries to report a phenomenon objectively, as it does in tracking the incarnations of Ross Perot.
That Powell is a phenomenon was apparent at the sight of the line winding four city blocks to his book signing in downtown Norfolk. He alighted at the store to applause as if stepping from a chariot.
Earlier, at the Norfolk Naval Base, responses along the line painted a portrait of an ideal president, with scant concern on issues.
A chief gunner's mate from a destroyer said: ``He's the first honest-appearing presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower.''
What they are looking for is character. The gunner's cautionary note suggests that voters may be more sophisticated now than when they liked Ike in 1952.
Part of Powell's appeal is his massive bearing. He arrives like a weather front moving in. In a 10-minute ``media availability'' - what a detestable notion and phrase that is - he was crisp, forthright. He has improved since a visit a year or so ago, Kerry DeRochi, our Brenda Starr, observed, tossing her hair.
Among the Random House officials at the final stop in Norfolk was Harold Evans, editor of Powell's ``My American Journey.''
Months ago at the closing of contract negotiations with Powell, Evans noted, the work force gathered outside the office to catch a glimpse of him when he emerged.
A modest Powell lavishes praise on his collaborator, Joseph Persico, who, Evans said, ``was relentless in probing Colin to remember every single detail of every single event.'' Powell calls the work: ``My story; our book.''
Is there a suggestion he has, when wronged, a trigger temper, as did Ike? The public does not expect a know-it-all Machiavelli in the White House. It yearns for a decent, decisive man who, when he detects a dissembler, will loose a thunderbolt at him and put the fear of the Almighty in him.
If, as some suggest, Newt Gingrich fancies himself a prime minister, then Powell, if president, would, when so inclined, deflate the writhing sidewinder like a balloon in Macy's Parade. Or so one hopes. by CNB