And so, there’s a hint of a suspicion the explosion was intentional-a collision of ego, ineptitude and subtle interests that sets the stage for far more substantive (and monumental) battles to come. The ineptitude is worrisome: Bill Clinton seems entangled in periphera, and rattled. His first 10 days in office were dominated by perennially disastrous “lifestyle” issues everything from quotas (the curse of Zoe Baird) to gay rights to the much remarked-upon return of the First Lady’s maiden name. None of which would have been earth-shattering, or perhaps even noticed, if it had been accompanied by anything that actually had an impact on the lives of non-special-interested Americans. But the turmoil left room for opponents and “friends” like Sam Nunn-still doing penance to the military, apparently, for going AWOL during the gulfwar-to jump in and aggravate the negotiations between Clinton and the chiefs.
Nunn is a bother. The chiefs are rather more than that-and the real concern in the White House last week was whether the military, and Colin Powell in particular, was using the gay-rights battle to launch a broader, far more threatening assault on the authority of a draft-dodging commander in chief who intends to cut defense spending. In the midst of the skirmishing, Powell opened a second front: he stepped back from an earlier agreement (with Sam Nunn) to eliminate costly redundancies-areas where the army, navy, marines and air force overlap. He said, in effect, that despite the end of the cold war, he wanted the Pentagon to remain as is.
The next few months will tell a lot about Colin Powell. His term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs will end in the fall. He will probably leave sooner. The question is, how amicably? After Powell’s first meeting with Clinton last November, the “chemistry” was said to be excellent. But the bottom line is brutal: Powell has disagreed publicly with Clinton on almost every military policy issue-homosexual rights (which he raised with the new president in November), troop reductions in Europe, the use of force in the Balkans. By contrast, Powell was emotional well beyond the call of duty in saying goodbye to George Bush on Jan. 14, praising his “moral integrity, judgment, tenacity, courage … We have fought under your leadership for true and noble causes.”
Nor is Powell reported to be very fond of Les Aspin, the new secretary of defense. Aspin, who came to the Pentagon as one of Robert McNamara’s whiz kids, has never quite overcome his early reputation among Vietnam veterans in the building (like Powell) as an antiwar publicity hound; his more recent support for the MX missile and the gulf war is seen as middle-aged dilettantism. And now Aspin is proposing dramatic changes in the military. Over the past few years, he has rethought defense policy creatively, from the bottom up-how to build a new service to meet the challenges of the post-cold-war era, rather than how to downsize existing forces (the Nunn approach rejected by Powell last week).
Aspin isn’t proposing anything drastic, but he does promise a more “purple suit” military-that is, not the traditional army green or navy blue, but a more fluid, less bureaucratic force that will smudge traditional service distinctions and hierarchies. The chiefs won’t like that. And the aggressive new secretary is bound to make more of the personnel and policy decisions his predecessor, Dick Cheney, left to Powell’s discretion.
The general’s reaction will be closely watched, especially by those who wonder if he’ll follow his acknowledged hero, Dwight Eisenhower, into politics. Powell isn’t given to melodrama-his disdain for the new administration, if it exists, will be expressed subtly. But his situation recalls a more flamboyant predecessor, Douglas MacArthur, who stormed the White House after Franklin Roosevelt announced major defense cuts during the Great Depression and said (according to William Manchester) that when America lost the next war and a dying American soldier “spits out his last curse, I want the name not to be MacArthur, but Roosevelt.” FDR, furious, replied: “You must not talk that way to the president!” MacArthur quickly apologized, left the White House and vomited. Bill Clinton’s dilemma is that he’ll never be so rudely challenged, nor so profoundly respected, by the man who may become his most formidable adversary.
