Colin Powell's "resignation."

that he would be staying on for a while to assist during the transitional period. So, does that make him a semi-colin?

.
At least there's nothing to support such a suggestion -- other than pure speculation, of course. But I, on the other hand, "speculate" that it was not forced. Who's right, you or me, and why?

I think I am for a couple of reasons. First of all, I remember back in 2000 when General Powell accepted the position, and he made several mentions of "one term". He never suggested that he would stay in the position as long as GWB was president. Second of all, there's been absolutely no press coverage about any suggestion that he was asked to leave. (Maybe there has been in Australia, but I'd bet a dollar to dirt it's baseless in fact.) And besides, if that was the case, the U.S. press would be all over it like white on rice (or brown on rice for all you health-nuts).

Okay, a third reason. The position of secretary of State is a tough position. The travel and time away from home is very taxing on a person, and the stress level must be incredible. Can you imagine, "negotiating" and/or otherwise dealing with a myriad of foreign bureaucrats, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year? It would be enough to drive an otherwise sane person absolutely batty.

Perhaps that's why there have been 64 U.S. Secretaries of State, while there have been only 43 presidents. The first U.S. Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, was appointed by George Washington in 1790. He, too, only served four years and resigned at the beginning of Washington's second term. But there have been 64 over the past 215 years. What is that, an average of a new Secretary of State every 3.35 years? It seems to me that General Powell beat the "average" tenure by more than a half a year. And to find a Secretary of State that served longer than General Powell, you'd have to go back to the Reagan administration, when George Shultz served for 6.5 years from 1982 to 1989.

And you'd have to go back to the early 60s to find one that stayed for two full terms.

The two-term Clinton had two.

The one-term Bush (41) had two.

The two-term Reagan had two.

The one-term Carter had two.

The "partial" term Ford had one.

The "partial" two-term Nixon had two.

Dean Rusk held the position throughout both the Kennedy and Johnson terms. He was the last "8 year" Secretary of State. Who was the last "8 year" person before him? Cordell Hull, who served in the position from 1933 to 1944.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/po/1682.htm#creation

Our equivalent is the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, currently Alexander Downer who has
held the position continuously since the
election of the Howard Government in 1996.

So I guess the job of the Australian equivalent
of your Secretary of State must be a lot less
demanding than the US position, if your
remarks about the difficulty of the position
being a cause for a fair turnover of
"candidates" are valid.

However Downer has had his work cut out
with Iraq, and complex and ongoing
interactions with our various Asian
neighbours.

We have our own local branch of al Quaida in
Indonesia:

"The al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror
group Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for the
Oct. 12, 2002, Bali attacks. It also has been
implicated in the Aug. 5 blast at the Marriott
Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people and
injured around 150."

So Alexander Downer's job is quite
burdensome as we try to establish closer ties
with our Asian neighbours -- and that includes
all the way up to China.

As you probably already know, the highest
concentration of Muslims in the world is in
Indonesia, with 130 million Muslims.

Australia and Indonesia are co-operating
strongly in attempts to locate these terrorists
BEFORE the event.

The position of secretary of State is a tough
position.

Hi Max. Thank you for your gracious words about people of my profession.

Seriously, though, I appreciate your efforts to find out if there was any basis for the references which I THOUGHT I had read.

A comment on the media in Australia. Currently they are having a field day speculating that Mark Latham's leadership will be challenged in the near future.

Mark has had to either deny or correct the various speculations. There is expected to be a showdown in the Labor Caucus this week which will either vindicate or dispel the allegations.

Our Federal Labor party seems hell bent on self-destruction through factional infighting.

Hi Max. Now I'm really confused as I don't know where that idea got into my head. I was just browsing my own website and this was the story I posted on November 16:

[Reuters, November 16, 2004]
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, widely respected in a world often wary of America's superpower diplomacy, resigned today.
Powell, who was viewed as a voice of moderation in an administration dominated by right-wing hawks, is the top administration official to quit since President George W Bush's re-election.
He was one of four cabinet members whose resignations were announced today by the White House in a typical transition ahead of a new presidential term.
The others were Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Education Secretary Rod Paige. Last week Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans quit.
Powell's resignation comes just as Washington makes a new push for Middle East peace and ahead of his planned trip to the region this month to possibly meet Palestinian leaders.
The former four-star general and first black secretary of state, who said he wanted to return to private life, will stay on until a successor is named.
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, emerged as the likely candidate to replace him, Republican sources said. Among Americans, Powell was consistently the most popular cabinet member and resisted calls in the mid-1990s to run for president.
But last year, he tainted his reputation by using flawed evidence over weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations to make Bush's case for apre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Powell failed as the top US diplomat to build a large international coalition for the war that sparked anti-American anger around the world and strained traditionally strong alliances.
His resignation comes as the United States also seeks to defeat an insurgency in Iraq ahead of planned January elections and works to stop Iran and North Korea developing suspected nuclear weapons programs.
"I believe that now that the election is over the time has come for me to step down as secretary of state and return to private life," Powell wrote in his resignation letter to Bush.
Powell was expected stay in office to hand over the post to his replacement in January, said a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, noting that this would depend on an orderly Senate confirmation for his successor.
"Even after four difficult years in a bitterly divided administration, Colin Powell leaves the State Department with his head held high and an unmatched reputation for integrity and wisdom," Senator Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said.
As the White House announced the resignations, it was not clear what the future held for Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, one of Powell's main bureaucratic rivals who is believed to want to stay on, Republican sources said.
Powell, the son of Jamaican parents, grew up in New York. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam and was White House national security adviser before he was named as the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most senior US military position.
Powell will leave his post as the top US diplomat in the wake of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's death, which the Bush administration believes offers a new chance for peace.

He told his staff he would keep working hard until he leaves office and was expected to initially lead the US diplomatic push to help Palestinians hold elections for a successor on the path toward creating their own state. He said over the weekend he hopes to meet Palestinian leaders in the "very near future" and officials said he could do so in Egypt at a November 22-23 conference on Iraq or a visit to the West Bank around the time of that forum.
"I don't think he's lost the flexibility to accomplish some of the things he wants to accomplish in his last months but I doubt that he wants to have the kind of lingering departure that harms his and the president's agenda and handicaps his successor," Danielle Pletka of the Washington-based think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, said.