Some "Inside the Family" on the Powells. Powell Sr's contempt for the Clinton crowd when they came assumed office in '92 and he was COS is now surfacing in the media. He considered them children.
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washingtonpost.com
'Soldier's Ethic' Guides Powell At the FCC
Chairman Gets Advice From Father, the General
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page E01
Michael K. Powell can't seem to please anybody these days.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said the public interest would be served if the agency overhauled its media ownership rules, which it did in June. But 2 million members of the public told him otherwise via e-mail and postcards.
He said Congress made him update the rules, to keep them current with the changing media landscape. But members of both parties in both houses of Congress disagreed, and voted over the summer to modify or wipe out the new regulations.
He said the federal courts tossed out the old regulations, telling him to come back with better ones. But when he did, one court issued an emergency stay to stop them from taking effect in early September. Last week, a second federal court told him that his thinking on cable lines and Internet service providers is wrong, too.
All of which has turned Powell into one of most widely criticized men in Washington, faulted by Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals, feminists, gun owners, big media companies, columnists and lawyers. Many have called on him to resign but Powell, as recently as early this month, insisted that he does not plan to do so.
By digging in and sticking to his policy prescriptions, Powell is following the advice of one of his closest confidants: his father, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
The Powell men e-mail nearly every day and talk on the phone when they can. The entire family, including mother Alma and sisters Linda and Annemarie, stays in close touch. When the secretary of state is in town, Sunday dinners at his Virginia home are required. The 66-year-old secretary has provided constant reassurance, a long-term perspective and "even a slap on the head" to his son over the past few controversial months, the younger Powell said in a late-summer interview.
" 'Look -- this is a tough and controversial decision,' " Michael Powell, 40, said his father told him. " 'You're the easiest [way] to make this issue accessible. The issue is very complex; have you heard the opposition express their criticism in a complex way? No. It's a lot easier to blast the messenger than deal with the substance of the issue.' "
The two men are alike in many ways, say those who know both -- the former head of the joint chiefs of staff and the eager Army lieutenant.
"You can't know us if you don't know the soldier's ethic," Michael Powell said.
For the younger Powell, the ethic was forged by a horrific accident in West Germany in 1987, when the young officer was thrown from a tumbling Jeep that bounced and landed on him, essentially breaking him in half. He spent the next year on his back at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the year after that learning to walk again. His back still causes him more pain than he lets on.
For the elder Powell, the ethic formed in Vietnam, as he watched a failing war firsthand. He experienced the many privations of soldiering, such as being unable to attend the birth of his first child, Michael.
As head of the FCC, Powell has led the most sweeping overhaul of media ownership rules in recent agency history. It largely has been up to him to justify why it's a good idea to allow television networks such as CBS and Fox to buy more stations and for newspapers and television stations to enter into more cross-ownership arrangements.
On June 2, the FCC commissioners voted 3-2 to pass the new rules, with Powell joined by the other two Republican commissioners, and opposed by the commission's two Democrats. While the new rules relax television and newspaper ownership, they also tighten radio ownership rules, but that action was criticized by groups that believe the radio rules are still too lax.
In late August, Powell attempted to address some of his critics by launching FCC efforts to ensure that local radio and television stations serve local audiences. Even that went over poorly.
"If he was an official in Japan, he would resign in shame," said Jeffrey A. Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which has opposed Powell and the new rules. "He has alienated practically every member of Congress and scores of interest groups."
Michael Powell said he tries not to take the criticism personally. Enter his dad, whom Powell calls "an emotional and moral cheerleader."
"He helps me keep things in perspective," Michael Powell said. "He'll say, 'Oh, you got hit in this article; ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, here's 20 articles from 10 years ago that said I was dead. When you get this, call me.' "
The Powell men are a rare and powerful dad-lad political combo, an reminder of which hangs on a wall in the FCC chairman's office.
As keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, Secretary of State Powell signed the presidential commission that granted his son the FCC chairmanship in 2001. Close inspection of the framed document, also signed by President Bush, shows that Colin Powell has punctuated his signature on the august and official decree with a smiley face.
"People would be surprised," Michael Powell said. "We don't spend a lot of time on the politics of this guy or that guy, or he's up to this stuff or that stuff. We don't traffic in that all that much. We talk about how to be successful, how to keep going and how to deal with the press and controversy."
Exit rumors have swirled around Michael Powell. As observers have speculated that he has been damaged by the media rules fight, there have been calls for his resignation.
"Just because Congress wants to potentially change its mind how about many stations you're going to be allowed to own in a market, I should quit?" Powell said. "I don't think so."
The Bush administration has threatened to veto any congressional attempt to overturn the FCC's media rules.
"Chairman Powell is doing an outstanding job of leadership of the FCC and the president very much appreciates his service," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday.
Powell has said he believes his ultimate audience on the media rules is the courts, not the public. But his refusal to play politics has hurt him. Powell was outmaneuvered and frustrated by fellow FCC commissioner Michael J. Copps, a Democrat and longtime chief of staff to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.). A relentless foe of Powell's on the media rules, Copps traveled the country, building a constituency in opposition, effectively reducing a complex, two-year FCC study and decision-making process to a concise message: Powell and the Republicans on this FCC want to hand control of the media to general-purpose bogeyman Rupert Murdoch and his ilk.
"I am sometimes surprised to the degree to which the death of our democracy is reported as if that might really happen," Powell said "Hitler didn't bring down democracy. Stalin didn't bring down democracy. Civil war didn't bring down democracy. I don't think television in America is going to bring down democracy."
Former FCC chairman Reed E. Hundt, an occasional Powell critic, said the current chairman is the product of his times.
"Mike Powell has had the very bad luck of inheriting businesses in trouble," Hundt said, referring to the struggling telecom industry. "Under those circumstances, pressure is brought to bear on a regulator. It's like being at the bottom of an abyss. It's crushing."
However, Hundt said Powell has reacted in an "idiosyncratic" fashion by ignoring the court of public opinion, which Copps plays to.
"Most people in public office say their audience is not the judiciary but society," Hundt said.
At about the same time his father was testifying before the United Nations in February, trying to rally world support against Saddam Hussein, Michael Powell presided over a public hearing on the new media rules at the convention center in Richmond. Several people walked to the microphone and said they were worried about the media growing larger and potentially more influential.
Toward the end, an editor for a Philadelphia leftist publication called Insubordination Magazine, blamed the news media in heated tones for promoting the administration's war on Iraq. This was the inevitable result, he said, of Michael Powell being the son of a "war criminal."
Powell said nothing, but a storm crossed his face that suggested he was but one barely-restrained second from coming out of his leather swivel chair at the guy. You can't know us if you don't know the soldier's ethic. An FCC staff member who was there said it took a substantial act of will for Powell to remain silent.
"You can imagine that a son is wired to defend the honor of his father," the staff member said.
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