Former Secretary of State Colin L Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problemsThe endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program Meet the Press, was a major blow to John McCain, who has been a good friend of Powell for decades. Powell, a Republican, has advised McCain in the past on foreign policy. Powell told reporters after the taping of Meet the Press that he had been disturbed in recent weeks by the negative tone of McCain’s campaign, particularly its focus on Obama’s passing relationship with William Ayers, a 1960s radical and founder of the Weather Underground. The McCain campaign has sought to promote the idea that Obama is “palling around with terrorists,” in the words of McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, because of Obama’s weak links to Ayers. “I thought that was over the top,” Powell told reporters. “It was beyond just good political fighting back and forth.” Powell did offer McCain a small dose of solace by calling him a different kind of Republican, although one who would support the party’s standard positions. “As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it,” Powell said. “But I think we need a generational change.” In offering his endorsement, Powell becomes the highest profile Republican to add his support to the Democratic ticket. Aides said it was not yet known whether the two men would campaign together — or what Powell would do alone — in the final two weeks of the presidential campaign.Those talks, aides said, were underway on Sunday.Powell’s endorsement exposed a fundamental policy rift in the fractious Republican party foreign policy establishment between the so-called pragmatists, a number of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake, and a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.
