There's a thread about Colin Powell sputtering on page 19 but I have 2 questions. If he had not gotten the 4 important appointed jobs he got, was there another black man who might have gotten those jobs by now? Who is he? Where does he rank among Secretaries of State?
Don't rush to answer. I'm a patient man. I'll start with the last question though. Thomas Jefferson was a bad Secretary of State. He was arguing with Hamilton all the time, did nothing about the French Revolution, delegated the issues of dealing with England and the Natives to others and quit when the European situation was at its worst.
I am not a big fan of Colin Powell. He turned on the Republicans and the Bush administration because he felt used when Bush mishandled the presentations that supported the Iraq War. His response was way overboard and showed a lack of judgement. As to your comment about "what other Black man could have done the job?" since when do we have to judge secretaries of state by affirmative action? I am more interested in who can do the job well. In recent decades, that has been a hard person to find, which has led presidents to by-pass the State Department for advice.
