Do we like them?

Do we like Colin Powell?

Our score: 7 out of 10. He changed his mind on gay service and backed decent causes, but the Iraq speech and the 1990s stance are real stains.

Colin Powell spent 35 years in the US Army and rose to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was also the first Black national security adviser. In 2001 he became the 65th Secretary of State, the first Black person in the job, and he stepped down in 2005.

The thing he'll always be tied to is his February 2003 speech to the UN, where he made the case that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. None were found. He later called the speech “a blot” on his record, and reporting says he never walked back his support for the invasion itself. That's one enormous mistake in a long career, and he owned it more openly than most people in his position.

Now the harm check. When Don't Ask, Don't Tell took effect in 1994, Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he had opposed gay men and lesbians serving openly. In February 2010 he said the policy should be repealed, and by May he was telling ABC's This Week that it would go away. His acts changed after the apology, not just his words, which is why this is an asterisk and not a fail.

On the rest of the harm test, he spent his later years pushing back on his own party. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, saying in 2012 he was more comfortable with Obama's positions on climate change, immigration, education and health care. In 2020 he said he would vote for Joe Biden and could not support Donald Trump. In 2018 he said Trump had swapped “we the people” for “me the president”.

Trump took a swipe at him straight after his death, mostly about Iraq, and plenty of people called it nasty. That's criticism aimed at Powell, so it doesn't move his score either way. Judge him on what he did.

The real good stuff: in 1997 he became the founding chair of America's Promise, a national group built to help young people succeed, and he stayed involved long after he left the chair in 2001. He and his wife marked its 20th anniversary in 2017 with a letter to the nation. One critic in 2000 thought the group drifted too far into promoting volunteering, but that's about method, not heart.