December 16, 2000: Bush Names Powell Secretary of State; Cheney Plans to Undermine Powell

President-elect Bush announces that former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell will be his secretary of state. Powell is a “tower of strength and common sense,” Bush says. “You find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them. I have found such a man.” Powell is the only Cabinet official not to have been vetted by Vice President Cheney or other Bush-Cheney campaign officials. Powell’s reputation as a master of moderate, reality-based foreign affairs is undeniable. However, according to a former Pentagon official, “Cheney’s distrust and dislike of Mr. Powell were unbounded” (see After January 20, 2001). In other words, author Craig Unger will observe, Powell is only on board for show: Cheney, the consummate bureaucratic in-fighter, will immediately take measures to undermine and negate Powell’s authority. [Unger, 2007, pp. 184]