Colin Powell's a great judge of character

Colin Powell made news last week with his endorsement of Barack Obama for President. The idea, I guess, is that Colin Powell is a great and objective judge of character and we should all listen to him when he says that Obama will do a great job as President. There's no evidence that he's ever done anything that would constitute evidence that he will be a competent chief executive for the country and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, you understand, this is one of those Powell-looked-into-his-soul-and-so-please-trust-his-judgment things.

WASHINGTON - One of the nation's best-known retired Army generals, Colin Powell, described Sen. Ted Stevens in court today as a "trusted individual" and a man with a "sterling" reputation.

"He was someone whose word you could rely on," said Powell, secretary of state in President Bush's first term, who self-deprecatingly described himself as someone who retired as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then "dabbled a bit in diplomacy."

The former secretary of state said he had known Stevens for 25 years, mostly in the senator's role as the top defense appropriator on a Senate defense appropriations committee. In Stevens, "I had a guy who would tell me when I was off base, he would tell me when I had no clothes on, figuratively, that is, and would tell me when I was right and go for it," Powell said. "He's a guy who, as we said in the infantry, we would take on a long patrol."

When asked outside of the courtroom after his testimony whether Stevens asked him personally to testify to his character, Powell said he couldn't recall if it was the senator or one of his lawyers. But he didn't think twice about testifying, Powell said.

"Not at all," he said, snapping his fingers to signify it was a snap decision.

That's right, folks, Obama supporter Colin Powell vouched for the character for truthfulness of a man, less than three weeks before he was convicted of multiple counts of being a criminal liar.

To me, nothing says "trustworthy" and "reliable" like being convicted of seven felony counts of making false statements. It's very strange to me: it appears that 12 jurors heard Colin Powell's testimony about his judgment of Ted Stevens's character and unanimously disregarded it and convicted the guy about whom Powell was testifying of repeatedly lying. In light of this, one wonders why Powell's judgment about Obama's character is worth any of the air time it has been given.