General Colin Powell, as widely speculated, endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President on Meet the Press this morning:

Afterwards, he gave a press conference and listed how the decision was made. He indicated that he’d startle to settle on Obama a couple of months ago, and then watched “the decisions that came out of the convention” - which seemed to indicate that the VP choices were factors in his decision. He also stated that Obama seemed more steady, stable, and inclusive.

He took a couple of minutes to talk about his position on the Iraq war and why we got into the war - including his role in it - and then talked about looking at January 2009, not 2003, and segued into his opinion that Obama is the one he wants in there to address the war.

Finally - and this is the part that might have the most impact two weeks before the election - he took the McCain campaign to task for its divisiveness over the last couple of months, listing in detail about 4 tactics he found particularly troubling and “over the top”.

Is it too late in the game for the endorsement to matter? Maybe. I’m betting that’s why he did it; watching him, I got the sense that this was a tough decision for him, and that he didn’t want his endorsement to make a huge impact earlier in the game. I predict a lot of liberals will dismiss his late endorsement as wimpy, and that a lot of conservatives will dismiss it as just one black guy voted for another.

One thing’s for sure, though: the GOP is going to have a tough time denigrating the character of Colin Powell, and any attempts to do so will backfire.

What do you think?

Posted under election 2008, politics