“We ought to keep on the track we are on,” said Republican former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday.
The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff praised President Barack Obama because he saw “the president get us out of one war, start to get us out of a second war, and did not get us into any new wars.”
Like many in America’s military, Powell thinks that going a few years without starting any new wars is a Good Thing.
Powell also praised Obama for his economic leadership, for stabilizing the country amid “chaos” and “very, very difficult straits”:
When he took over, the country was in very, very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment peaked a few months later at 10 percent. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, the housing was start[ing] to collapse and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.
Powell is less impressed with his own party’s nominee:
“One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal, same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern … is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have.”
Powell also said that he has given close consideration to Romney’s domestic policies. “As I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with respect to our most significant issue, the economy, it’s essentially let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things but that compensation does not cover all of the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense.”
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