November 21, 2009



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Portrait by Blake Little

Staying Powell

By Nancy Perry Graham, July & August 2006

The former secretary of state talks frankly about Iraq, his future, and holding fast to his ideals




When asked about his life, General Colin Powell has a favorite new expression: he prefers to look through the front windshield rather than the rearview mirror. "There is nothing I can do about what's in the rearview mirror," he explains, "and if I go fast, that which is behind me will disappear more rapidly." The saying is apt, given that Powell, who turned 69 on April 5, likes nothing better than to get under the hood of a car (his retirement gift from President Bill Clinton was a beat-up 1966 Volvo fixer-upper). And nobody can blame him for wanting to put some distance between himself and his tenure as secretary of state for President George W. Bush, during which he delivered his now famous United Nations speech declaring incorrectly that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Powell himself has admitted the speech and its aftermath were low points in his otherwise remarkable career.

But on this balmy spring day in late March, Powell is having a good laugh. Here's what is tickling the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—a man who was also President Reagan's national security adviser, two-time winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, knight commander of the British Empire, and one of the most decorated and respected leaders of our time: the fact that he came out number one in an AARP The Magazine reader-interest survey, ahead of movie hunks like Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Nick Nolte, and Robert De Niro. ("Write this down, this is good," he directs his principal assistant.) And also that a magazine devoted to grandparenting recently named him one of the ten sexiest grandparents in America, along with Pierce Brosnan, Whoopi Goldberg, Goldie Hawn, and Tony Danza—though Danza, he points out, "got the bigger picture." For a man who has at times carried the weight of the world on his formidable shoulders, he clearly doesn't take himself too seriously.

Not that he isn't proud of his other, loftier honors: on May 1, at AARP's National Leadership Conference in Baltimore, Powell was presented with an Andrus Award (named in honor of AARP founder Ethel Percy Andrus), which is given biennially to distinguished individuals for significant contributions to society. Also in May, he succeeded Henry Kissinger as the eighth chairman of the Eisenhower Fellowships.

These days, though, he spends most of his time "dabbling." He is working with Revolution Health Group, a company led by former AOL chairman Steve Case that is focused on using information technology to give citizens—especially older folks—greater choice in how they spend their health care dollars. He's also a limited partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and has become more involved in The Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at his alma mater, the City College of New York (CCNY). He is raising money to build an education center across from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to provide more information about the names on the wall. And he still helps with America's Promise, an organization now run by Alma, his wife of nearly 45 years, to "strengthen the character and competence of America's youth." Topping it all off, his third grandchild and first granddaughter, Abigail Frances Lyons, was born in November 2005.

It is a quiet Friday afternoon, and Powell, who has hastily wolfed down a five-dollar Quiznos submarine sandwich and a caffeine-free Diet Coke out of a plastic cup, is unusually relaxed as he settles into his Northern Virginia office, with its unobstructed view of the Washington Monument, to discuss how he rose from being an average, ambitionless kid in the South Bronx to become the most powerful man in the U.S. military; how he really feels about the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism; why it's important to give kids the opportunity to win; and the burning question: on the cusp of 70, what does he plan to do with the rest of his life?

"I was blessed with a family that wouldn't let me fall by the wayside even though I would have done it in a heartbeat if I didn't have them."

Q: Birthdays are a good time for reflection. You look great. Is 70 the new 50?
A: I don't know. I've seen a lot of 70-year-olds who are far more robust than me, and I've seen a lot of 70-year-olds who have been beset by illnesses. And a lot of people don't make it to 70—I've lost a lot of friends over the years. But, increasingly, with improvements in health care, with improvements in lifestyle choices, and improvements in not just health care but health—and I'll come to the distinction in a minute—people are able not only to live longer but to live active lives longer.

I'm working with a company involved in consumer-driven health care—to put choice more in the hands of the consumer. But the more we got into it, the more we realized it's not just health care, meaning giving you care when you need it. It's also health—making the right choices about how you live to avoid needing health care. It's preventive. It's good diet. It's exercise. It's getting your blood pressure taken on a regular basis. So, for example, we're entering into business arrangements with some retail stores—you've seen these walk-in clinics you'll find in a Wal-Mart or a Kmart. Go there regularly to have your blood pressure taken and to have your eyes examined. Go there regularly for prostate screening.

If you do that kind of stuff regularly, your health care hopefully will be delayed to a later period in your life. For those who are getting older, like me, health is as important as health care. I'm a cancer survivor, and I have hypertension. I go see a doctor at the drop of a hat. I take my own blood pressure on a regular basis. I don't fool around because I want to avoid health care.

Q: But for somebody like you, 70 isn't what it used to be. You're active in health care, Silicon Valley, and you probably still love old Volvos.
A: Corvettes. [Powell is now the proud owner of a 2005 silver Chevrolet Corvette coupe and drove a bright red Corvette convertible as pace car driver at last year's Indianapolis 500.]

Q: The epilogue of your autobiography, My American Journey, written before 9/11, doesn't rule out a return to politics. In it you talk about the need to reestablish moral standards in this country, the need for fiscal responsibility, and the importance of free enterprise. That starts sounding like a vision. What do you still have to accomplish on a grand scale?
A: I have never gone through life driven with an ambition or a vision that there was something I must accomplish on some grand scale. I came into public life and into adulthood as a serviceman, as a soldier. As a soldier you start out being told what it is we're going to accomplish, and you serve and obey. As you get more senior in rank you are expected to have a vision and you are expected to set a path for other people, which I did as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as we saw the end of the cold war, and dealt with crises that came along like Desert Storm and Panama. But I have never felt unfulfilled if I didn't have some great thing out there waiting for me. I've kind of let things come to me. I did not lobby to become secretary of state. The President wanted me to do it, and I was honored to do it.

Q: You turned down that job once. Why?
A: I turned it down twice, with Clinton. I'd just gotten out of the army, and I had nothing. I'd just gotten through sending three kids to school on an army salary and no other income. And no inherited wealth. I was in my late 50s, and I had no greater responsibility at that time than to create an estate for my family. And I did that. [Powell wrote his bestselling autobiography and went on the speaking circuit after retiring from the military.] Because you don't know. I may be in great health and tomorrow I could fall over with an aneurysm. So you have to live one day at a time, particularly at my age.

One thing you might have noticed is that almost none of what I'm doing now has anything to do with the military or the State Department or diplomacy or foreign policy. It's kind of deliberate. I don't like to go back to what I used to do. I'm not a revolving-door kind of person. I want to go work on something new. Always focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror.

Q: Speaking of that: given that there are issues in this country that need fixing, and you seem to have a vision, under any circumstances would you…
A: No.

Q: ...run for president? Under no circumstances? Even though you said in your book you would not rule out a political future?
A: I took a hard look at it in '95, really never expected that level of interest in me as a political figure, but the book, and my book tour, exploded that interest. And I realized that this was not something I truly wanted to do. I never woke up any morning saying, "My God, I can't wait to get out on the campaign trail." I don't have that passion. And it was not something my family wanted to do, meaning my wife. But it was basically my decision. We never had to have the final climactic family meeting over it. We finally stopped listening to everybody who was trying to tell us what to do with our lives and said, "What do we want to do?" And not a lot of us thought we wanted to do this. So it was a mutual decision.

"When people ask me, 'Is this a blot on your record?' Yeah, okay, fine. I have a blot on my record. It's there for everybody to see forever."

Q: In one interview Alma said she would support you if you ran, but she was trusting you not to.
A: That's the closest she ever snuck up to that. And for a minute there I was appalled. And then she fixed it in that very last phrase: "I trust him not to." So she was very cleverly dumping it on me and then pulling it right back. She would always say something like "I will support him" because she supported me everywhere I went, and never unwillingly. So when she said, "Of course I would support him," that would have created headlines the next day. Because everybody knew what Alma really thought. And then she said, "But I trust him," with the words dripping with irony and threats.

Q: What if somebody, like John McCain, recruited you for vice president? [Powell shakes his head no.] No, you're not interested?
A: I'm not interested in elected politics. I get the question every day, and I try to be as honest as I can about it.

Q: But you're not going to be content for 20 years doing speeches. You know you'll do something. You don't have something planned or something you're thinking about?
A: No.

Q: Come on. Would you accept another Cabinet position?
A: I will not answer that question.

Q: But you wouldn't rule it out.
A: Of course not. Does that answer your question? But I am 70, and I'm not looking for a full-time job. I've done full-time jobs most of my adult life. And I kinda like dabbling. And I do a lot of dabbling.

Q: Your career was almost spotless. Does it bother you that your most recent public position was a low note? You've said it was very painful.
A: Yeah, it hurt. Let me point out that the same intelligence I provided that's subject to so much controversy—that's the same intelligence that the Senate and House used four months earlier to vote for a resolution. It's the same information the President thought was accurate after his director of intelligence told him it was a slam dunk. And it was the same kind of intelligence that President Clinton used to bomb Iraq in 1998. But nevertheless there was no spotlight on this issue like the spotlight I had on me at the UN. I wasn't alone in believing those stockpiles were there—our commanders believed they were there, and they were prepared to fight through chemical attacks to get to Baghdad—and our President believed it and Congress believed it. So when it turned out that part of that information was wrong, the spotlight was on me. And I'm disappointed. I'm sorry it happened and wish those who knew better had spoken up at the time. But there isn't anything else I can say about it. When people ask me, "Is this a blot on your record?" Yeah, okay, fine, it's a blot on my record. But do you want me to walk around saying I have a blot on my record every day? I have a blot on my record. There it is. It's there for everybody to see forever.

Q: You've always had the attitude that everything looks better in the morning: "It ain't that bad." Did you feel that way in this case? Did it look better in the morning?
A: Ummm, it took a few mornings. You know it wasn't right away that I discovered this stuff was wrong. We sent 1,400 people to look for the stuff that we were sure was there. So the only part that kind of annoys me is "Well, did you lie? Or were you misleading?" No, I didn't lie, and I wasn't misleading. If I was lying and knew what the truth was, which has to be the basis of a lie—you know the truth—we wouldn't have sent 1,400 people wandering around Iraq looking for the stuff. They didn't find it. So the intelligence was wrong. And that's all you can really say about it. Yeah, it comes up almost every day.

Q: I'm sure it does, and I'm sure you get tired of talking about it.
A: I really don't, because it gives me a chance to explain it.

Q: Many people wonder, once you knew the intelligence was wrong and we were already in there, why did you stay? Where do you draw the line between being a good soldier, loyal to your superiors, and true to your own beliefs and values?
A: Why would I have quit? Because we had bad intelligence? If I had been lied to, that would be different.

Q: For reasons like Vice President Dick Cheney doing end runs around you.
A: He did his end runs, I did mine. He's the Vice President. It's all bureaucratic warfare.

Q: But was there never a point where you felt any sort of tug between being loyal to the boss, particularly in Iraq, and what you believed?
A: This comes up all the time, so I have to be very precise. What about Iraq did you think challenged my loyalty to the country? Why would there be a suggestion that I was disloyal because I stayed with the President on policy?

Q: It goes back to lessons from Vietnam. You like to quote famous military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, who wrote that without all three legs of the "triad" engaged—the military, the government, and the people—war cannot stand. Once we knew the intelligence was incorrect, didn't we lose the people part of that triad?
A: When the weapons of mass destruction argument fell apart from the standpoint of stockpiles—there's no doubt he [former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] had the intention, he had the capability, and he'd gassed people in the past—what was missing now were the stockpiles we thought were there, and the stockpiles gave the urgency to action. When that went away, some of the American people said, "Oh, wait a minute, it wasn't that urgent. We could have perhaps used diplomacy longer."

"Terrorism is scary. They can come and knock down buildings. They can kill some of our fellow citizens. But they can't defeat us as a nation."

But that's a judgment that presidents make, not secretaries of state, not secretaries of defense. And, yes, the President had very strong people in his Cabinet. He had a strong Vice President, a strong secretary of defense, and a strong secretary of state who was not hesitant to speak his views. But the decisions that were made were not made by me or Mr. Cheney or [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld. They were made by the President of the United States. And my responsibility was to tell him what I thought. And if others were going in at different times and telling him different things, it was his decision to decide whether he wanted to listen to that person or somebody else.

More often than not, we fought these things out in a setting where all of us were present and we all had the opportunity to speak. There were occasions when the President made decisions that some of us weren't aware of because it was tunneled into him. But I've been known to do the same thing. I would go in and say, "You've got to take this to the UN." And guess what? He did. It wasn't the choice of some of my other colleagues.

Q: Did you go into him personally, without other people?
A: Yeah, one on one, me and him. Condi [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser] was there to listen, but I did it alone. Because I thought he hadn't heard the whole case. But this doesn't shock me and surprise me as much as it does a lot of other people. It's not a basis to say, "Nah, nah, nah. Somebody went in and I wasn't there, so I'm going to take my marbles and quit."

Q: Okay. But during the first Iraq war you gave some advice and [then Secretary of Defense] Dick Cheney said, "You can't say that, you're not the secretary of state."
A: Yeah, but I did, and kept doing it.

Q: My point is that later, when you were secretary of state, he reportedly ignored your advice and did end runs.
A: That's his privilege as Vice President. He was tough, demanding, and when he thought I was out of line, he snapped my garters. I guess that's not a politically correct thing to say. But when he thought I was out of line he would pull me up short. But guess what? He was my boss! He's supposed to, and let me know where the line is.

Q: About Vietnam you've said: "Many of my generation…vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support. If we could make good on that promise, then the sacrifices of Vietnam would not have been in vain." Right now there is a lot of public sentiment that Iraq is half-baked, yet you've said we'll probably have a presence there for a number of years. Is that living up to your vow?
A: During my time in uniform I think I was faithful to that quote. Panama was as perfect an example of the strategy that I believe in [have a clear military objective and go in with enough force to win] as anywhere else—more so even than Desert Storm, though nobody ever talks about the Panama war. And so the way we worked in Panama, we scaled it up times 50 and did Desert Storm. And in Desert Storm we didn't overextend. I got criticized for 12 years for not going to Baghdad. No matter how many times you told them [lowers his voice to a whisper], "We were never going to Baghdad. The President didn't say go to Baghdad. The UN didn't say go to Baghdad." We had Egyptian and Syrian troops with us. We couldn't go to Baghdad. It was never the plan. The plan was to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Guess what? We kicked the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Clear mission, clear objective, we accomplished it, we finished it.

This time around in Iraq I'm not the chairman nor am I the secretary of defense. I'm the former chairman, and I'm secretary of state. And after one of the meetings I called General [Tommy] Franks without telling Mr. Rumsfeld. Just called him, one old general to another old general. And I said, "Tommy, are you sure you have enough troops? This looks awfully light to me." And General Franks says, "Yeah, I think we're okay." "Are you sure, Tommy?" And then we talked about it some more, and as soon as we hung up he called Mr. Rumsfeld back—having called Mr. Rumsfeld as soon as I called him—he called his boss, correctly: "Powell's calling me." And Don said, "Talk to him." And we talked, and he called Rumsfeld back and he said, "Good, let's present all of this to the President." And we did, the following week. See, I went a little out of channels there.

And the following week when they were briefing the plan, either Don or Tommy said, "Well, Secretary Powell has a slightly different view." And I said, "I'm worried that the size of the force may not be adequate to the task." And I discussed it, and the President listened. And then he listened to his military commanders and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense, and they recommended a force that was big enough to accomplish the mission. I mean, it did. It did it. But it wasn't robust or strong enough in the aftermath to control the country, which was what my concern was. But I was no longer the chairman. Isn't that fascinating—Cheney chewed me out once for acting like the secretary, and now in this war some might criticize me for acting like the chairman. [He laughs heartily.]

Q: So why is it in our vital interest to have a presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future?
A: Because the original mission that we went in to deal with has not been finished. The conflict is not over. The conflict did not end when the Iraqi army cracked. We have taken out the government that was there—Hussein's government. Once we did that, on the ninth of April 2003, who is the government of Iraq? We are, under international law, until we turn it back over to a newly established government.

And that was my concern—that we gotta understand that when you crack this goblet, it's a crystal goblet, and it's all going to shatter. And as I said to the President, which has been widely reported, "If we break that government, we're gonna own it." But we weren't prepared to do what was necessary to own the country and dominate the country, and keep an insurgency from breaking out.

Q: When you look forward, what are you afraid of for your grandchildren? You were very optimistic back in 1995 when you wrote your book.
A: I still am. My grandchildren aren't going to see a world war. My grandchildren aren't going to be threatened by the prospect of thermonuclear exchange the way I was, and the way I used to duck under my little school desk. My grandchildren aren't going to see anything like that. There's an Iran and an Iraq and a North Korea, but that isn't going to rise to the level of the Soviet threat or the Chinese threat.

Q: But isn't terrorism scarier than that?
A: Terrorism is scary. I think we have to put terrorism in context. It's the unknown about terrorism that's so scary. It's not an enemy you can see and attack and defend yourself easily against. And they can come and they can knock down buildings. They can kill some of our fellow citizens. But they can't defeat us as a nation.

Q: Unless we let them.
A: Bingo. You're stealing my speech. Only if we start being so afraid that we don't let people come to this country, we don't want any foreigners here, we don't want any Arabs or Muslims running around here, and we take counsel of our fears. We let terrorists scare us so badly that we don't go to football games, and we're afraid to go here and we're afraid to go there, which was something of the case in 2001 in the fall. We're coming out of it. People are going now to entertainment facilities, more students are coming back to our schools, and we're righting ourselves. And we've got to stay upright.

Q: But what if we get hit again? Finally it comes to our shores like it has in Britain?
A: And what did they do in Britain? By the next day they went right back. [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair did not let terrorists change Britain. They were living with terrorism for 20 years with the IRA, and bombs were going off all over the place.

Q: And we're not used to that.
A: We've been fortunate we haven't had one in nearly five years.

Q: Why not? Who or what do you credit that with?
A: Well, one, we're far better at defending ourselves—screenings, visa processing, and we've gone after [terrorists] and we're chasing them all over the place. And it's not easy to put one of these [bombs] together when you're being chased and watched. So I think they just had trouble operationalizing some of it. And a lot of their people have been scooped up. But say there is something going on and they hit us again, and they knock down another building, and they kill people. Unfortunate, troubling, we mourn those who are lost, but we rebuild things, and we go on with life. And it won't be as serious as the 9,000 people who died of AIDS today or the 22,000 who were infected. So we can't let terrorism take the place of the Soviet Union as the threat that keeps us all afraid. We can't change our way of life or the openness of our society or the value system that we rest on, or else we're doing their work for them.

Q: You don't worry about Iran?
A: We don't want to see Iran with nuclear weapons. But it's not the Soviet Union. It's a country that has been trying for years to create a nuclear weapon. They haven't been successful. They're still trying, I think, and the international community has to put pressure on them. Right now they want to do low-level uranium enrichment, which does not produce bomb material. Can we stop them there? That's what all the diplomats are arguing about and debating.

Q: You say in your memoirs that your life changed, in the army, the first time you realized you could really be good at something. But until then you'd been directionless.
A: Most kids are, unless they're these little overachieving, advanced-placement types, or were driven so hard and so early by their parents that they know by 14 that they want to be brain surgeons. Nobody I grew up with was like that. All we wanted to do was get old enough to drink a beer and then get drafted.

Q: So how does an average, unmotivated kid rise to become the top-ranking officer in the U.S. military?
A: I was blessed with a family that kept me in play. They wouldn't let me fall by the wayside even though I would have done it in a heartbeat if I did not have them. I sometimes use the metaphor of the pinball machine. You know, you shoot this ball out and out comes this kid, and the kid goes bouncing around the pinball machine, hitting the bumpers and heading into the holes that take you nowhere, and just about the time you're about to slide off into nowhere, the flippers kick you back into play. That's your parents, it's your family, your cousins, your peers, your teachers, your coaches, your ministers, your rabbis. Kids need adults to keep them in play while they're figuring out where they want to go.

Q: Do you have any regrets or guilt about not being around more for your three kids, or—you are shaking your head yes—about anything at all?
A: Yeah, but I don't share regrets or grief.

Q: No? Why not?
A: Because real men don't do that. Real men just eat it and go crazy and have heart attacks. [Laughs.]

Q: But just in terms of spending more time with your kids...
A: Oh, I'd love to have done that. I didn't meet my son until he was seven months old. And I was there when the girls were born and then I left not too long after. But I think we're a pretty close group, and the older we've all gotten, the closer we have become. The kids had the usual sibling rivalries as children, but they have become extraordinarily close, the three of them. And what you discover is that whether they want to or not and whether they admit it or not and whether they like it or not, they turn into you.

Q: But you have a long day at the office, you come home, you're tired, you're not giving them your best time.
A: My parents worked every day of their lives down in the garment district. They were never around. I was a latchkey kid; my sister was a latchkey kid. We were left at neighbors' and aunts' and uncles' in the South Bronx, and we saw our parents really only on weekends. It's the quality of the relationship as opposed to the amount of time. And when you're with your kids, you're with your kids. They'll be rebellious—I was rebellious. I got thrown out of church camps. It isn't that difficult what most kids are going through, but they've got to have somebody who's going to be that flipper.

Q: You've said we need a third "civil war" here to ensure economic opportunity, education, and to rebuild the family structure so that no young person is denied. How do we do that? How do we reach disadvantaged kids who don't have that "flipper"?
A: What a kid needs is the tribal experience that comes from family. It could be the kind of traditional family we know or some of the nontraditional family units that have come into vogue. You belong to this family, we will not let you fail. If children do not get that from adults, what do they get? They're blank recordings. If there's nobody pushing them, they will drift off and find other tribes. They will pick up the worst pathologies—drugs, crime—of the communities in which they live unless they have adults who say, "Wrong, no, that's not what we do in this family."

Restoration of traditional family would be great, but I think that's much harder than it might have been 20 or 30 years ago. There are kids who have never had a laptop, with an aunt or a mommy reading to them—that kind of laptop. A teacher once told me, "These kids come in here at age six with their eyes blazing with excitement and joy, and by age nine the lights have started to go out. They realize they aren't making it." So you compensate for it with mentoring programs, with Head Start programs, with school programs, with what you saw down [at America's Promise] on the fourth floor.

Q: You've said we still have work to do in terms of equality. So what is your feeling in terms of how we get there—the economic leg of your civil war?
A: The economic leg doesn't do anything if the kid can't read, has no skills for the job market. If a kid doesn't know how to use a computer and is not information-literate, there's nothing the economy can do for that kid except give him a minimum-wage job.

Q: So it's education.
A: It's education. And, increasingly, it's education to give these kids the skills they're going to need for the 21st century, and the self-esteem and the belief in themselves that they can be part of the 21st century.

Q: Speaking of self-esteem, I liked the stories you told in your book about one of your commanding officers, Henry "The Gunfighter" Emerson, coming up with ways to give recognition to kids who had never been winners.
A: Yeah, that's what we did. We worked hard at it. We'd invent crazy sports so that dozens of people could play. We never played tennis in the Second Infantry.

Q: Right. Combat football.
A: Combat football, so that 80 people could play at the same time and even the least skilled athlete could be a winner.

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Q: Is there a way we can replicate that stuff here at home?
A: No. Try to play combat football and they'll put you up for child abuse. When I was a battalion commander we would have all kinds of competitions, so that anybody who really wanted to win something could win something, at least once, because we had so many competitions. And so we ought to do more of that with our kids.

But your generation raising kids [adopts wimpy voice]: "Oh, they'll feel bad if they lose. Oh, let's not put them in competition with each other." [Resumes his normal voice.] "No, let's get them ready for 'life.'" [Laughs.]

I went to my grandson's gymnastics meet. He's a very good gymnast, and I sat there for the whole afternoon, watching him. He's only 12. He had been winning a lot and then he started to lose interest. And after a while he let it be known to us: he just wanted to have fun. He didn't want to win. He said, "Do I always have to go out there and get a medal?" And I said, "No, Bryan, just go have fun. Do the best you can, and maybe you will get a medal. But that doesn't make any difference. Just go out and have fun."

Nancy Perry Graham, deputy editor of AARP The Magazine, formerly covered politics and policy for Fortune and Money.