Welcome to Democracy-ish.

I'm Toray.

And I'm Danielle Moody.

And we're here to say goodbye to a relatively complex legacy of General Colin Powell,

somebody who I think there's two big points that I want to kind of comb through.

A person who had great charisma, gravitas, and a sense of integrity that he may have used for evil,

depending on how you see it. The first thing that I want to dig into before we talk about

the Iraq War and his legacy, Colin Powell, to me,

is one of the most important precursors to the Barack Obama presidency that there is.

In 1995, he was incredibly popular, incredibly famous. It seemed like the country was begging him to run for the presidency. And all these

white people were like, oh my God, you're the most exciting person in the country. We want you to be

president. He was, his book, My American Journey had just come out. He's touring the country,

promoting the book, and thousands and thousands of people are showing up at his bookstops.

And he was seriously thinking about running for the presidency.

And he wrote a speech saying that he was going to run.

And it seemed like it was his for the taking that if he only said, okay, I'll run, then the job was his.

Now, we've seen people enter the race seeming over, seeming like overwhelming favorites and sink

immediately or sink over the long term, but he seemed like an incredible, an incredibly well-set-up

candidate.

It is my contention that the time America spent

thinking about and envisioning him as president allowed people 12 years later to see Barack Obama

in that role that much more easily. Obama had hurdles to get the American mind to understand

...