General Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama! pt.1
Watch the video if you missed it Tom Brokaw asks the big endorsement question at round the 4:20 mark. Colin Powells answer continues into the second video where he says he is voting for Barack Obama as president. He also makes it clear that his decision to endorse Barack Obama was not based solely on the fact that Barack Obama is African-American.
Colin Powell officially endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for president. The retired general who is a conservative Republican told Tom Brokaw on Meet The Press that the country needs change and that influenced his endorsement of Obama. Colin Powell was secretary of state in th Bush administration and explained that he broke with party lines because he did not agree with the tactics and strategy of the McCain campaign including their attempts to call Barack Obama a terrorist due to his association with William Ayers. Powell's endorsement of Obama is a huge loss for John McCain and a hit to the Republican campaign. The press speculated for years that Colin Powell would run to become the first African-American president.
General Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama! pt.2
Colin Powell, who was secretary of state in the Bush administration, broke with his party Sunday to offer a stunning and powerfully worded endorsement to Senator Barack Obama's presidential candidacy.
Powell, a retired general, described Obama as a "transformational figure."
"He has both style and substance," Powell said in an appearance on NBC. "Obama has displayed a steadiness; showed intellectual vigor. He has a definitive way of doing business that will do us well."
The endorsement by Powell - one of the most respected of American elder statesmen, who was also a national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - came on an extraordinary weekend for the Democratic candidate: He announced an astounding record of $150 million raised last month, with more than 600,000 new donors, far exceeding in one month the $84 million available for the entire campaign to Senator John McCain, who unlike Obama, has accepted public funding.
And Obama drew the largest crowd on U.S. territory of the campaign, an estimated 100,000 people in St. Louis.
That left his Republican rival struggling to stay afloat in an ever more hostile election environment.
The Arizona senator has sharpened his attacks - he suggested over the weekend that Obama represented socialist policies, that his fund-raising is suspect, and that as president he would raise taxes and oversee a risky "spending spree."
But under immense pressure from Obama's rising campaign, his own has seemed to lose focus, with McCain embracing some tactics or lines of attack he had once shunned as unworthy.
"There are a lot of strange things going on in this campaign," McCain said Sunday on Fox News, referring to a number of small donations to the Obama campaign that appear to have been made under false names. Asked whether Obama - who is now outspending McCain by a 4-to-1 margin, is "buying the election," McCain replied, "I think you could make that argument - but we're not going to let him."
But McCain's appearance was overshadowed in some ways by the Powell endorsement. source
Powell also admitted to Tom Brokaw that he does not agree with John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as Vice President. Colin Powell appeared on Good Morning America last April. Powell praised Barack Obama but did not endorse his candidacy for president.
Colin Powell Doesn't Endorse, But Praises Barack Obama. Colin Powell on Good Morning America, April 10, 2008
Saying the Democratic nominee could "not only electrify our country but electrify our world," Colin Powell crossed party lines this morning and announced his support for Barack Obama.
Powell made his announcement on "Meet the Press." He said he had no plans to campaign for Obama.
Offering an extended rationale before making his preference known, the former secretary of state said he had only come to his decision in recent weeks in what he called the campaign's "final exam."
Powell praised Obama as a "transformational figure" who he has gotten to know in the past two years.
But Powell made plain that his decision to back the Democrat was as much motivated by what he saw from McCain and the GOP as anything Obama had said or done, using much of his explanation to express unhappiness about the campaign of a man he's known for 25 years.
Powell, who last year gave the Arizona senator's campaign the maximum $2,300, criticized McCain's response to the economic crisis.
"Almost every day he had a different approach to the problems we were having," Powell observed.
The former Army general and moderate Republican also repeatedly expressed concern about the GOP's "rightward shift," using the selection of Sarah Palin for vice president as an example.
Palin, Powell said flatly, is not qualifed because she's not ready to be president â the primary role of the vice president . source
