Word: alma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that tipped the balance--not even the obvious ones. His family heard the rumors that they had somehow vetoed his running. "There was a lot more to it than that," says Michael, as he pauses, lets out a sigh and begins to tell what happened. "I hear 'It was Alma' all the time. Well, it wasn't just Alma. This is a much more sophisticated, subtle story than that...
...Alma? There was never a veto. Powell never asked...
...have to understand how this family works, Michael explains. Everyone who knows Alma says that if her husband had chosen to run, she would have supported him, however opposed she was to the whole idea. And that's why he never came out and asked her, but tried to read the signals instead. "My mother would look at him and say, 'If you want to do it, I'm in,'" Michael says. "The kids would say the same thing: 'We're in.' Because we've done this before. We're always in. That's a cardinal rule in this house...
This was not the first time Alma and the family had wrestled with hard choices about service and sacrifice. "She has been down this road many times before," Michael says. "So has the family. When I was born, the man was in Vietnam. I met him when I was almost one year old. Four and a half years later he went back. Not knowing whether we're going to hear any day that he was never coming back--that's a real aspect of military family life. So how we went about this decision was unique, but not foreign...
...everyone now knows too well, those instincts are, above all, cautious. Campaign veterans observe that deciding to run for President is fundamentally an irrational act. Colin Powell, for all his candor and appealing humanity, has never been given to irrational acts. He decided to marry Alma only when she threatened to break up with him as he was heading for Vietnam. And so he went about weighing the White House bid very carefully. One of Powell's 13 Rules is "Check small things." He reviewed every pro and con, every poll, talked to a wide circle of friends and advisers...