The Right Colin Powell

...the Democrats are softhearted but clearly softheaded...

...Get those lazy mothers to work...

...What really counts, then, is both providing women with compassionate alternatives and winning the culture war...

...Probably...

...Too often, leading Republican candidates fall back on the same old tactic of frontally assaulting the Democrats' dug-in positions...

...No, it's not...

...There are reasons to believe that Colin Powell just possibly could make the best president of all those in the running...

...I would love to be able to tell Ben during a televised address, "President Powell is a moral man who emphasizes faith, family, and work...

...Teenagers need support in making good choices...

...Most women feel they have no choice...

...Some Republicans appreciate this...

...Powell says that an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant and does not want a child should give birth and place the baby for adoption...

...If what Powell means by "social conscience" is support for conventional government programs defined by entitlement, bureaucracy, and the naked public square, he is not worthy of support...

...Welfare is paying big bucks to a bunch of bums...

...If Powell wants to fight abortion-and he said on "CBS This Morning" the other day that "we should do everything possible to avoid that choice for a woman"-there is much he can do...

...For such a coalition to succeed, of course, libertarians must acknowledge that virtue is an essential base for democracy, and the Christian right must learn from Patrick Henry and George Washington to work alongside the freethinking Benjamin Franklins and Thomas Jeffersons...

...Sure, "social conscience" has become liberal doublespeak-but what if Powell is sincere in meaning the words in their non-propagandistic sense...

...That's good-and yet Powell's skin color could be a huge advantage...

...They may prove to be right in the end, but so far they are rushing to judgment...

...Colin Powell, who spent three decades working to contain one evil empire, could excel at implementing plans to contain another...

...Still, on racial issues and others we may be entering an age of congressional government, in which the president will be less powerful in shaping legislation but as crucial as ever in setting a tone for the country and in throwing a spotlight on pressing needs...

...In a third broad area, political strategy, some historical study should keep us from quickly dismissing Colin Powell...

...Powell is a strong backer of Elayne Bennett's Best Friends abstinence program, which is a good sign...

...Now to a second issue...

...He can be "prochoice" in the sense of not seeking to prohibit abortion by law-and then even more pro-choice, in a way that saves hundreds of thousands of lives each year, by helping to promote alternatives to abortion at three crucial points...

...They rallied against the Stamp Tax because both low-taxers and religious conservatives were concerned about London's stamping of ecclesiastical papers...

...But if by "social conscience" he means that the better-off should not abandon the poor, and if he wants to empower community-based organizations to do the job, relying on person-to-person help informed by faith, then he may be the warm-hearted but tough-minded president America needs...

...They need to see that effective anti-poverty programs work when they provide compassion that is challenging, personal, and spiritual...

...Black kids often are pressured to see virtue not as universal but as white...

...A president who did not want laws against abortion but truly wanted to make abortion rare would have many opportunities to help do so...

...At the center I chaired and the nine others I've seen close up, the counselors get no pay but a lot of abuse from the abortion industry...

...Before the Revolution, two groups of Americans roughly analogous to the libertarian and religious-right wings of today's Republican party arose to challenge London's centralized rule...

...Powell's warm endorsement on CBS of the purposes, if not the entire legislative agenda, of the religious right is encouraging...

...He writes in his autobiography, "I would certainly not run simply because I saw myself as the Great Black Hope, providing a role model for African Americans or a symbol to whites of racism overcome...

...it would not be enough, as journalist Nick Eicher put it wryly, for a president merely to announce that "adoption is a matter between a woman and her lawyer...

...The vast majority undergo assembly-line procedures and have no contact with the doctor before the operating room...

...The Powell I could support would promote abstinence...

...It is Powell's follow-up statement that causes consternation among pro-lifers: "If it is her choice to abort, it's a matter between her, her doctors, her family, and her conscience and her God...

...That combination can rebuild our cities and bring them hope...

...Crisis pregnancy centers also face regulatory barriers and bureaucratic harassment, and a committed president could help to free them...

...Powell could help immensely even during the campaign by visiting a center and treating counselors as the heroines they are...

...A president would need to support adoption strongly to fight prejudices built up over years...

...I think about this particularly because the youngest of my four sons, Benjamin, is black...

...Second, this Powell would show commitment to the work of crisis pregnancy centers, which provide material and spiritual aid so that women can carry their children to term...

...He would use the bully pulpit in a credible way (Clinton obviously cannot do this), and he would push to substitute abstinence programs for condom pimping...

...More Republicans in Washington need to understand that our goal should be neither piddling reform nor instant elimination of the welfare state but its long-term replacement...

...Bob Dole is a walking political tactic, Phil Gramm seems to be all economic calculation...

...Shouldn't public policy be more than that...

...Steady pressure helping to consolidate public opinion against abortion will contain and eventually roll back the abortion empire...

...So that's pro-choice...

...James notes that as volunteers do more and welfare recipients escape dependency, government will save substantial sums-but she presents such savings as a by-product of freeing poor people sunk in dependency and welfare workers mired in drudgery...

...Marvin Olasky is a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the author of The Tragedy of American Compassion, and the editor of World, a weekly news magazine from a Christian perspective...

...his statement "I think it is very, very good that the Christian right has focused us on this again, that we are a nation put here by a divine providence" is important...

...A Colin Powell who understands this would not run as an independent, scorning those who relish their dependence on a higher power...

...Finally, a personal encounter with race influences my sense of Powell's potential as a president...

...If Colin Powell is the establishment's counterrevolutionary candidate, then he does not deserve support...

...Most women abort because they are pressured by boyfriends, parents, a sense of aloneness, and fear about careers...

...you voters will choose hard over soft...

...Now, most unmarried mothers are never counseled about alternatives to single parenting, so they think that placing a child for adoption shows a lack of love...

...In the same way, today's fiscal and moral conservatives can agree that there should be no federal funding of abortions or pornographic art...

...Consider abortion...

...my wife and I adopted him when he was three weeks old, and he has just turned five and begun asking questions about color...

...Leaders such as Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams had the wisdom to build a coalition from such disparate elements...

...Third, this Powell would strongly support adoption...

...Thus they feel pressured into a choice that usually commits them and their children to a life of poverty...

...Conservatives are hooting at Powell's self-definition as a "fiscal conservative with a social conscience...

...The 1995 debate over welfare reform has been a tad smoother, but the message of the past three decades remains: We may be hardhearted, but at least we're hardheaded...

...Top-down role modeling is secondary to the bottom-up racial reconciliation that this country desperately needs, particularly in the O.J...

...If that would be good for Ben to see, how much more would it help all the black kids without fathers...

...Governor Allen of Virginia, for example, and his secretary of health and human resources, Kay James, emphasize that their welfare reforms seek to change lives for the better, not just cut costs...

...Is that sentimental...

...Girls desperately want to know how to say no without giving offense, and boys need alternative ways of displaying manhood...

...If, on the other hand, he sees the necessity for a revolution deeper than Washington normally thinks of-a revolution of morals that would mean the overthrow of anything-goes liberalism-then he soars above the leading presidential contenders...

...If Powell is rebelling against the choice between hard-hard and soft-soft, he's right: All Americans-and poor people especially-need leaders who are warm-hearted but tough-minded...

...he would run as a Republican and strive to bring big government under control by uniting those who back small government with those who care most about the moral ends of government...

...Some 3,000 such centers across the country offer real choice to unmarried pregnant women at one of the roughest times of their lives...