Powell Power

Colin Powell is still showing why he was just about the most popular Secretary of State ever among the department's employees. From his remarks yesterday at a ceremony marking the kickoff of the Powell Fellows program, designed to develop future leaders of the Foreign Service and civil service: "In my career, I was a White House Fellow, which is a little bit like this, where I was essentially pulled up out of the day-to-day business of being a lieutenant colonel in the Army and suddenly sitting in the White House trying to make sense of how all that worked. It is some 30-odd years later and occasionally I had the same experience -- try to figure out how government works at the most senior level, even when you are in government at the most senior level, because government is challenging, bureaucracies are challenging. What makes it all work are gifted leaders, gifted people, gifted leaders who understand that it isn't just leadership at the seventh and eighth floors, it's leadership everywhere throughout the department."