Colin Powell: Public life, Volvos, and a poignant what if
Colin Powell – who held some of the most stressful national security posts in the U.S. government during decades of public life – used to relax by fixing up old Volvos.
He would say that unlike many geostrategic problems, a balky carburetor could be straightforward to fix.
When he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1990s, he kept five or six Volvos stashed in garages near his quarters in Fort Myer, Virginia. At that point he figured he had already renovated more than 30 of the boxy, reliable Scandinavian cars.
Lynne Cheney, wife of then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (and mother of current GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming) wanted to buy one of Chairman Powell’s finished projects. The JCS
A military life at high speedA bend in historyWhat might have been for the GOP – and America