Last week (4-24) I said I thought the fight between Gingrich and Powell was really a fight between the way a Defense Department works and the way a State Department works. Powell’s defense yesterday makes me think he understands the debate better than the media.
Powell said that State is "always willing to receive helpful, constructive comment as to how to improve our operation." Secretaries of state, he said, have all "been criticized at one time or another for being like diplomats, for trying to find peaceful solutions . . . to creating alliances. That's what we do. We do it damn well, and I am not going to apologize to anybody."
Gingrich thinks the State department is less effective in general, and people have tried to paint it as an attack on Powell. Powell’s is doing his job, just fine. It’s the state department that is in question not Powell’s effectiveness as its leader. Gingrich made his statements I think, because these kinds of issues rarely get debated outside an administration. The media usually focuses on personalities when they can find them. By doing so here, they have missed the issue entirely.
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