Yeah.

Due to the significant roles played by black communities, the Aaron Harbor Show is honoring Black History Month with a selectio of a variety of past programs.

As is the case with all of his shows.

These programs were recorded with each guest and Aaron together in studi were side by side on location.

These shows were recorded over a span of two decades.

You can also view them at Bitly, slash, Aaron, hyphen, PBS and Harbor TV.com.

The eclectic sample of past guests selected for this special series include the following.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, world musician Taj Mahal, media magnate Byron Allen, civil rights icon Joh Lewis, and General Colin Powell.

We hope you enjoy the series and the celebration of these inspirational icons who happen to be black.

This special program features general Colin Powell.

Colin Powell was a military hero, American statesman and esteemed diploma who became the first black U.S. Secretary of State.

He also was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position for all branches of the military who was black.

As a soldier, he served honorably and courageously in Vietnam.

Much later, as a general, he successfully led the U.S. and International Armed Forces coalition responses to the invasion of Kuwait.

General Powell authored the Powell Doctrine, which limited U.S. interventions by requiring certain American interests to be met prior to any military action.

Over a number of years as he continuously demonstrated extraordinary service to America.

He received the Soldier's Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Welcome to the Air and Harbor Show.

I'm your host, Aaron Harbor.

I'm absolutely honored today to have as my special guest, General Colin Powell.

General, thank you so much.

Pleasure to be here.

Of course, many of you know, Colin Powell is our secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.

He also was the chairman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He was the youngest, I believe.

Yes, ever appointe and the first African-American to hold that position.

He also served as our nation's national security advisor to the president.

He currently sits on the Council on Foreign Relations.

If I started reciting the medals he's received and the awards we received, he would not get a chance to speak.

Colin it's so, great to have you here.

I want to talk about leadership today.

I also want to talk about some of the initiatives that that that you, you and in fact, alma, have undertaken.

But first of all, I want to talk about it.

I know you're a very humble person, but I'm going to ask you to be immodest or at least talk about it conceptually.

You've really been saying for many years in this countr is an extraordinary role model.

And I'd be interested in your thoughts about just the concept of being a role model.

I mean, to to many Americans, certainl to to black Americans as well.

And and how you thought about that, if you felt.

An obligation to that.

Because certainly today, one of the things we see of many high profile people, as they say, well, I don't think I am a role mode or I don't have an obligation.

Do people, with your accomplishments, your stature, do you have an obligation to be a role model or is that simply a choice?

Well, the term role model always causes me to vibrate a little because it it's, you know, it's it's putting quite a, a trip on yourself.

And, but the fact is tha people do ask me to come speak to youngsters or other groups of people about how I have, been successful in life and how can people learn from my successes and from my failures.

But the message I usually leave with, young audiences, high schoo kids or elementary school kids, look at people like me and let's see what you can learn from m and my successes, my failures.

But ultimately, the only role model that counts in your life is yourself.

Be your own role model.

Don't try to be me.

Don' try to be a basketball player.

Be yourself and learn how to achieve with your own skills, your own aptitudes, and learn from others.

But ultimately you have to set your own standard.

You can't be anyone but yourself.

So be your own role model.

Now make sure that you create a good role model in yourself for yourself by doing the right things in life, by working hard, by never giving in to despair, by learning from failure, learning from others and constant education.

Constantly bettering yourself.

Constantly examining what you were doing wrong.

Fix what you're doing wrong and move on.

Be your own role model.

There seems to be a real, proble in America day with with leaders being willing to admit when they've made a mistake.

Why is that always been the case?

Or do you think in the last.

Well, nobody likes to, admit that they've made a mistake.

And in my case being a rather public official for the last 20 years, I don't have to admit them.

They're there for all to see.

And, I spent a lot of time on this subject with kids because I have run into young people who have had sort of gifted lies and they've never had a setback.

And then when that first setback comes or the first failure comes, well, the first test is failed or they didn't get an A or something doesn't go right in a personal relationship.

They're crushed.

And I say to them, guess what?

This is life.

I fail at something every single day.

That's a part of life.

And most of the very successful people I know in life have been failures at one point or another.

And it is out of that failure that they launch themselves anew.

So, failure is a part of life, and the only thing you should do with a failure is learn from it.

What did you do wrong?

Not.

What did somebody else do to you or someone else do wrong.

Even though they may have, what did you do wrong and learn from it?

And when you learn from it, internalize those lessons.

Roll the failure up.

Throw it over your shoulder and don't think about it anymore.

Or I say to all of my audiences, I try to go through life looking through the front windshield and not the rearview mirror.

I can't change anything that's in the past.

Therefore why spend a lot of time on it?

And, I was giving a speech to a group of Japanese students, and one of them one young girl, raised her hand.

And in all seriousness, she said, do you ever feel anything?

I'm.

I don't know how to deal with failure when things go wrong.

And we had a wonderful 20 minute conversation and I said, my dear, welcome to the world.

Welcome to life.

You can have a lot of failures.

The only question is how do you how do you climb out of them?

In the concept, certainly the concept of using failure to advance what you're doing, makes a lot of sense.

If you give me an exampl of something in your life where, that that you felt you failed or you regretted, but that you used to make a change in how you you functioned, you operate.

There was one point in my career where I was not getting along with my boss, and, he reflected it in a report.

We're not talking abou Fort Carson, Colorado, IRA.

And, I di not feel, negatively toward him.

That was his judgment.

I think his judgment was wrong, but I accepted it.

And we talked about it, and he said, this is the way I feel.

And I thought that this pretty much was, going to end my career.

And I started to carve out what I would do next in life.

But it turned out there were others who were watching the situation, and they said, no it's not the end of your career.

And so I moved on from that.

But there was a period of time there when my whole life as a soldier, I thought was, you know, going to come to an end, what do I do next in life?

And I've seen a lot of people like that.

Steve Jobs of Apple is a great example.

He failed repeatedly, and with each failure he rose and excelled again.

I was fired from Apple.

He dropped out of school.

When he was at when I was a younger man.

And from every one of those failures, he gained, and I've seen more and more people like that who gained from failure.

And and when you're thrown out of the situation because you failed, the, the the deck is clear, the blackboard is now clean and you can start again.

And so, failure is not a pleasant experience.

Nobody likes to fail, but from failure grow and then start out again.

You spent a lot of time, reflecting on leadership and leadership issues, especially political public leadership.

How has leadership and your sense of volved in the last 20 or 30 years, when you look at your career, both in the military and in the public eye, what do you see that has changed, especially at the top, of leadership in America?

Well, I have always, approached any leadership challenge, whether it was in the military or in, civilian organization or in business, in the same way.

And that is, the role of a leader is to empower the followers.

So leadership is all about followership.

How do you put follower in the best possible environment to excel, giving them a clear sense of purpose, goals, communicating to the followers your passion.

What do you believe in?

And if you do that correctly, then they will take up your passion.

It'll become infectious and they will become not only motivated to do what you want, they will become inspired.

And so it's all about followership.

Now political leadership is a little different because here you don't have just a group of followers.

You have voters and you have to motivate them, and you have to cause them to believe.

And when wha you believe in and vote for you, it's become more difficult in, in recent years because I think of the explosion of media, with blogs and cable channels, and you are never away from the public eye, and it becomes much more difficult, to be a leader in that kind of environment, to exercise political leadership, because every word has the possibility of being taken out of context and used against you.

So what I see political leaders over the last, let's say, 50 years doing is having to become far more cautious.

And in that caution, you tend not to be as direct as say, Harry Truman or Franklin Roosevelt might have been the days of quiet backroo political negotiations are gone.

Maybe that's good, but it's also made a little harder to achieve, consensus and compromise in political life.

And so I think the, the relationship of political leaders to the media has changed what they're able to do.

But the basic principles ar there have a sense of purpose, have goals, and make sur that you can communicate those to those who are your followers or the voters.

Do you think today, can you be a political leader and not, literally compromise your soul?

And I know there's constant discussion about, you know, people, whether it be staying on one position evolving to another position, or the way people are attacked today and the way they're attacked personally today.

I think you could do i without compromising your soul.

I mean, you have to you have to have a soul.

You have to have a bedrock set of principles.

But ultimately, the role of the political leaders to get elected and to get elected, you have to get, sufficient number of votes.

And it may be necessary to compromise your position or shift from time to time, neve violating your basic principles because voters will sense that you don't get away with that.

But they will understand if you find it necessary to shift a position that is not totally violative of your basic principles.

And we have to remember, as we try to be too noble about don't compromise.

This nation is based on compromise.

The Founding Fathers intended it for there to be a clash of ideas.

And then out of that clash of ideas, the opponents find ways of compromising.

And from compromising, you get consensus and you move the country forward.

And so compromising is embedded in our political system and in our Constitution.

And the way in which the Founding Fathers set this country up are people of today politically, when you look at the leaders that you know and the peopl involved in the political realm, is there a tendency to be less willing to compromise?

I think in our political life, particularly in Congress, it has become, a little too rigid on the extremes, and there is less opportunity to compromise.

I think, partizanship is good.

Our founding fathers and our political system is based on Partizanship.

But when Partizanshi then degenerates into raw, pure right and left wing ideology, where we're not going to compromise, we're going to stick with our principles and not accept any of your principles an not find a way to move forward.

This doesn't serve the country well, and I've seen too much of that in recent years.

In that vein, when you look at and you talk about the evolution of politics, and now when you look at the financial side of politics and to get elected, the amounts of money candidates have to raise the role of special interests in terms of funding campaigns is that making candidates, once elected, more beholden or more rigid in positions because they're afraid they're going to lose that support?

Well, I think every candidat has to consider where am I going to get the money to run?

And what that means is where do I get the money to do television?

That's what's driving at television.

And we have had special interest in the American constitutional system since the very beginning.

Not as sophisticated as K Street lobbyist as their call, and not with 527 and other kinds of, clever political, action groups to fund campaigns.

But any candidate who wants to have the resources to take their case to the people, I have to be sensitive to these, special interests.

And I don't believe that that is necessarily illegal, immoral, or fattening.

It's the way the political system works.

You just hope the candidates have a core.

They have a solid core of values that will not allow a particular contributor to knock it off.

Listen to your point of view.

I'll hear you.

I'll take your money.

But it doesn't mean I'm going to do what you want me to do.

And I think most of our political leaders are pretty, are pretty good at this.

They're not all compromised by special interests and by PAC money.

I think they all have a core.

I may not approve or like the core of eac one of the members of Congress, but I think they each have a core and they haven't sold out.

Now, we've had some incidents in recent years of members of Congress who have sold out and who have corrupted themselves, and most of them are in jail, which shows that the system does have the ability to identify people who this is wrong.

This is against the law.

It' against everything we stand for.

And you have to pay the pric when you contrast what you know.

I mean, you know, so many I mean, you know, senators, you know, Congress people, you know, presidents and and, you know, because of your personal relationship with the that even if they're accepting funding from various sources, that that the vast majority of these people are not for sale, almost all of it that I have known, except for a few rare exceptions, are not for sale.

They are trying to do the best job they can.

They may have a political bent one way or the other, but that' what makes politics interesting.

But they really are trying t do their best for the country.

And, I have had nothing bu respect for those individuals, even when I've had the most serious disagreements and all out fights with them.

It was always business, never personal, because they had the same goal I had which was to serve the nation.

But how do the American people do it?

I mean, you you have an inside view that few have, and you have an insid understanding that if you have the American people see those scandals that you talk about and and clearly when you look at, for example, the ratings of Congress, which are barely deniable percent.

Yeah.

It's terrible.

But it's always been low people.

People have always liked to, to pick at the Congress, but they elect them.

I mean, they, they don't come down from heaven, but we like our, you know, every like our congressmen.

I just don't like ugly.

Yeah, exactly.

You know and they all are elect reelected at an exceptionally high rate, 95%.

And one could say, well, it's because of funding, it's because of pork.

It's because of gerrymandering of districts.

Frank.

What?

For whatever reason, the American people generally are satisfied with their member of Congress.

They just don't like the body.

Well, okay, that's one of these little contradictions in our American political life.

But as I go around the country and you, you've been characterizing me as something of an insider.

But I do a lot of outsiders stuff.

I travel all over this country talking to the most diverse groups you can imagine.

One da it might be a group of cardiac surgeons, the next da it's a group of target salesmen.

I get everywhere Comcast, Cox.

They're all my clients on the speaking circuit.

And I learned so much abou what's happening in the country.

And the American people are far more discerning and sophisticate than their judgments of things.

Then sometimes we in Washington give them credit for it.

They know how to sort of penetrate through the fog and the spin to the truth.

Let's talk about leadership in tough time when when a leader needs to ask, citizens to sacrifice.

And I'll give yo a couple of examples, certainly, with the war on terror, a very serious issue and a different issue than the country has faced, before, when the 911 attack occurred, instead of being asked to sacrifices Americans have traditionally been asked to do in times of war.

The message from, President Bush at the time was, we need you to go and shop.

And which which didn't seem to be a terrible burden.

For many, we have, roughly a $53 trillio cumulative set of obligations.

The promises we've made, the federal government has made that are unfunded, something like $175,000 per person.

Every man, woman and child debt in this country that we don't seem to be addressing, where we're enjoying the present at the sacrifice of our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

How can a leader, come forward and say, and you could add climate change if if someone is really sees climate change is an issue that's going to affect the globe and billions of people in a negative way, how can a leader come forwar today in America in particular, and say, you know, here is a set of serious problems or here's one terribly serious problem, and it's only getting worse, and we need you to sacrifice in the context.

Context that I ask you that question is that, you know, it seems to me that we elect leaders who tell us everything's oka or that that they have solutions that are that are not, that are painless.

And we punish leaders who say I need you to tighten your belt.

I need you to to have less today.

Am I wrong in that perception of the American people?

Let me start with that last point.

The American people do have a tendency to say, yeah, we know what we need to do.

Oh, we really don't want to pay for it.

We want to do.

It is very hard for a political leader to overcome that kind of, the body politic.

That's what the American people are thinking.

You can't go to them and say, I'm going to raise your taxes 20% throughout every economic clas because you won't get elected.

And so a political leader has to figure out what will the public traffic bear.

And if I'm going to ask people to sacrifice by raising their taxes or asking them to forego SUVs or any car that does not, make more than 30 miles per gallon, you've got to make sure one you can make it happen and that there there is a feeling in the country that this is a necessary shared sacrifice.

I think that feeling is starting to emerge with respect to our energy problem.

I sense people are now starting to say, well, wow, I better think about a more efficient car.

Or gee, maybe we ought to spend more money on solar and wind or nuclear power or whatever.

And so I think attitudes are changing.

Now, the point you made about President Bush when he said, let's all go shopping, did more than that.

And the reason we were all saying that at the time is 911 was such a tragedy, but we couldn't let the country just stop and go into total mourning.

We had to get back to normal.

New York is open, remember, as Rudy Giuliani said, something similar, Ne York is again open for business.

We couldn't let the terrorist win by shutting ourselves down.

And so that was the context of that kind of approach.

And I've been saying it ever since, for the last six years, that, America has to go after terrorists and there is a terrorist problem out there.

But you know what?

The terrorists cannot change who we are.

Only we can change who we ar by being so afraid of everything that we don't go to Disneyland, that we don't encourage people to come visit America, that we make it hard for people to get through our airports were difficult for them to get a visa terrorist win.

When we shut ourselves down this way and we change who we are, we mustn't change who we are.

We've got to go on with life.

When you look at some of the problems and of course you were our secretary of state, globally, so many of the problems that that the world faces today in terms of health care, in terms of nutrition, in terms of medical care, in terms of global warming.

Climate change, are related to population.

How does the United States take the lead?

And should we be leading by example and saying, look, the root of so many of these problems, not all of them, but so many of them are related to population growth.

We're on a track right now by 2050 to have 420 million people in the United States.

The, the the Earth currently has about 6.7 billion and is on a track to 2050 to get to 9.5 billion people.

And and when you look at, the, the risin economies of, of China and India and then you start adding, almost 3 billion people to the mix, I mean, that's going to have an extraordinary impact.

What can the United States do on the population front?

Well, our population has been growing rather modestly compared to the the developing world.

And I don't know tha we are in a position to dictate or even sugges to other countries what their, what their, population control, policy should be.

China had a one child policy, but that's causing, demographic problems because that one child now has tended to be male.

And so they're having a imbalance in their population.

I have for the 50 years of my adult life, listen to Malthusian arguments about how we're going to run out of everything and, it's going to be terrible.

Yet the world has been able to accommodate to growth of population.

Will another 3 billion, make it impossible to sustain, that growth or that that number?

I don't think so.

Technology has done wonderful things with respect to the production of food.

Takes fewer and fewer peopl to grow the food that we need.

And that same kind of breakthrough technology, can be applied to other parts of the world.

We've got to do something about global warming and the emissions that are going in to the atmosphere, because as countries develop, China, India, Eastern Europe, elsewhere, Latin America, Africa, those people want the same kind of middle class life that we've been enjoying for all these years.

So you're not going to tell them, don't buy a car, don't have nine electronic devices in your living room like our kids do.

And, you know, behave yourselves, know they want the same kind of life we have enjoyed.

And so we're going to have to figure out a way how to have that kind of life universally that place less demand in our environment.

The one thing that I think we can't technol technologically get out o is the fact that we are emitting too much into our atmosphere, and the atmosphere is finite.

So we're going to have to find ways to reduce that, that carbon emission.

And I think that is one of the great challenges, as much as food, clean water, clean water, we can get it from the sea if we invest in nuclear power to pu that kind of technology to work.

But the atmosphere is finite.

All right And we're running out of time.

A whole area.

I want to spend time with you on.

And let's take our remaining time is kids, you and I have been involve with and have led have created America's Promise Alliance.

What are kids need today?

Kids nee what they will always need it.

And people are.

Ask me, why did you get involved in kids?

I started to get involved with them.

I had kids for my whole career.

As a soldier.

I took in 17 and 18 year ol kids, made soldiers out of them, and those soldiers needed the same things my kids needed and what all kids need.

They need an adult to look up to.

They need a responsible, caring adult to pass on a thousand generations of experiences to how are you supposed to live?

Well, secondly, they need a safe environment in which to learn and grow.

They need a healthy start.

They need to be given a skill as they are educated, that will make them contributing member of society.

And they need to be taught that you got to give back to society.

That's all there is to it.

That's what I got.

That's what you probably got from your family.

That's what every kid deserves.

We have too many areas in our country where the kids don't have this.

If too many places in our country where kids are not getting the education they need, the dropout rat in some of our inner city urban neighborhoods is 74%.

We can't sustain that in the world that you've been describing.

We can't have millions of our kids failing, and if they fail, we'll know it early and they're heading to jail when they turn 18 years old.

So that's why alma and I have made thi an important part of our lives.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, general.

I want to thank my guest, General Colin Powell, for joining me today.

We're going to talk about these topics again.

I'm sure with him in the future and especially, his focus on kids on children in America.

This is Aaron Harbor.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Yes.

I. I'm Aaron, host of the Aaron Harbor show.

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