LETTERS: IN THE WAKE OF POWELL

To the editor:

It was a defining moment when Gen. Colin Powell announced that he would not be a candidate for the presidency or any other elective position. The American people in various polls indicated that Gen. Powell would be the candidate above all others in the race for the presidency.

Contrary to some opinions that he has not defined himself, he had indeed. He has described himself as a Rockefeller Republican. This is enough in itself for those who have any recollection of the Eisenhower and post-Eisenhower years within the Republican Party. He positioned himself as a moderate on issues that have brought fort loud, mean-spirited rhetoric from others in the party. He has sought accommodation in the Republican Party as a framework in which he chooses to operate.

The people had spoken. Their message was clear. The Republican Party has spoken. Its message is clear. Not the general has spoken. He says that he doesn't hear the call to enter the presidential race. The call that he has heard is that the predominant element in the Republican Party doesn't want his type. It has served notice that his entry in the presidential race as a candidate of their party would generate severe conflict. The overriding struggle would be for the soul of the party, perhaps eclipsing the substantive encounter in the campaign. Powell has probably decided well, figuring that such an enterprise would be a useless exercise and an imposition on his family and the country.

What happens now? Sen. Bob Dole, the most capable reconciler of the past, has cast his lot with the rightest element of the Republican Party. He can hardly revert to his true type and recast himself in a more pleasing posture. He would suffer credibility. Ross Perot is past history. Newt Gingrich may still be envisioning himself as the savior of the day. For all we know, a truly independent presidential candidacy may yet be fashioning itself, unlikely though it seems.

At any rate, a balloon of hope for much of American has unceremoniously descended. Yet American desperately needs to achieve a balanced budget in which the burden is shared equitably among rich, middle class and poor. It desperately needs a well-ordered single-payer national health care system, rather than the developing special-interest engineered mess we're staggering into that defies understanding. Just as desperately, it needs a welfare system with a heart. Some members of our society are in difficult straits of their making, others by circumstance beyond their control. It is un-American to depict all of these as larcenous beggars. It is necessary to recall that the present system was developed when the private sector could not or perhaps would not handle the flow.

Still, America needs a leader with the fire in the belly to bring reasonable solutions to the table, win or lose.

GILBERT DEGENHARDT

Cape Girardeau