At Colin Powell's Funeral, Washington Is Pulled Together

• Nov. 5, 2021, 1:53 p.m. ET

The ceremonial for Colin L. Powell, erstwhile caput of state, president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and nationalist information adviser, brought retired a Washington that hardly exists anymore: Republicans and Democrats, including President Biden and 2 of his predecessors, uniformed subject and diplomats, and radical connected each sides of the Iraq war.

No 1 would person been much amused by the turnout than Mr. Powell himself, who often ran a smiling, half-whispered, commentary connected the city’s impermanent loyalties and backmost country machinations. Yet connected Friday, the Washington National Cathedral was filled with them each — erstwhile officials who were astatine Mr. Powell’s broadside successful the Persian Gulf War and connected the seventh level of the State Department, wherever helium often waged a behind-the-scenes conflict for power successful the Bush White House.

Mr. Biden did not speak, nor did the 2 erstwhile presidents who attended, Barack Obama, whom Mr. Powell endorsed during the 2008 campaign, and George W. Bush, who made Mr. Powell his archetypal caput of state. Instead, among the eulogists was a Democrat who had often clashed with Mr. Powell implicit the general’s reluctance to perpetrate American forces to battles for which the general, seared by the acquisition of his work successful Vietnam, did not spot a clear, palmy outcome.

“He said I astir gave him an aneurysm,” the Democrat, Madeleine Albright, who served arsenic caput of authorities successful the Clinton administration, told the mourners, recalling Mr. Powell’s absorption aft she famously asked him, “What’s the constituent of having this superb subject you’re ever talking astir if we can’t usage it?”

They argued and argued, and the statement delayed the American involution successful Bosnia.

But implicit clip they besides became the adjacent friends, which became captious aft the disputed 2000 election. When Mr. Powell was named her successor, she said, helium drove implicit to her location successful Georgetown, walked successful the doorway and unneurotic they began readying a succession — thing that did not hap 20 years later, when, paralyzed by President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to admit his defeat, the Trump medication resisted a cooperative handover of power. (Mr. Trump, who denounced Mr. Powell a time aft helium died, was not contiguous astatine the ceremony, and not mentioned.)

“He made pragmatism charismatic,” Ms. Albright said of Mr. Powell.

Throughout the ceremony, determination were galore specified stories from a seemingly mislaid Washington, arsenic participants told the communicative of however a lad of Jamaican parents grew up successful the Bronx, had his beingness fixed meaning successful the Army, and roseate done the ranks serving presidents of some parties. It was what his son, Michael K. Powell, a erstwhile president of the Federal Communications Commission, called a existent “American journey,’’ a operation drawn from the rubric of Mr. Powell’s autobiography.

Even the country of the ceremonial itself seemed a uncommon solemnisation of a fig whose enactment affiliations seemed acold little interesting, and little concrete, than his attack to war, diplomacy and problem-solving. The National Cathedral is traditionally the tract of statesmanlike funerals — Ronald Reagan’s was held there, on with George H.W. Bush’s — but lone seldom for different notable figures, including Senator John McCain, who died successful 2018.

Mr. Powell’s quality to pb — whether helium was successful complaint of troops oregon the diplomatic corps — was recalled by Richard Armitage, who served alongside him successful Vietnam, became his closest person and his lawman caput of state. “One time I asked General Powell what is the concealed of leadership,” Mr. Armitage recalled.

“You spot immoderate people, they look great,” helium recalled Mr. Powell saying, with their awesome uniforms. “But the information of the substance is that they can’t pb a equine to water.”