I was in the Department the day that Powell arrived. He was a breath of fresh air after a string of very bad Secretaries of State, starting with Jim Baker, continuing with the comatose Warren Christopher, and then the vile Madeleine Albright. The State Department was in disarray, morale was at rock bottom, literally hundreds of officers had quit or taken early retirement. Our Embassies in many countries were barely functional, and very exposed to terrorist attack. Department employees were constantly being lectured on the need "to do more with less" but no reform of the bureaucracy was undertaken to make it leaner and more efficient; everything was pretty much left as it was, but just given less money -- except of course for Albright's travels, in (my office) she was known as the "Empress" for her lavish demands on the budget.

So Powell was a relief. He quickly set about getting State extra resources, undertook some reforms (not enough in the end) of how we operated, pushed more resources out to the Embassies, and dragged State into a modern communications/IT environment (some offices and Embassies were still using WANGs!) He spoke of empowering the "field commanders," making them less dependent on Washington, encouraged unorthodox thinking, and reminded supervisors of the need to "take care of the troops." He loosened up the onerous restrictions on FSOs talking to members of Congress and staff. All good things.

On the substance of policy, however, he proved highly conventional...