Patsy isn't quite the right word. An instructive case would be John McCain, whose long term political strategy involves periodically breaking with his party of quasi-substantive issues, providing a sense of independence and objectivity, which in turn allows him to store up what might be called rhetorical capital, which is inevitably expended at critical junctures — major votes, candidate endorsements — to bolster the party line from which he is reputedly so autonomous.
But the McCain case is modulated by at least two factors: its extension over decades, and the fact that he hopes to be president. Both of these set horizons for exactly how far any given apostasy can go, and how much of his rhetorical capital he can sacrifice on the altar of his boss. This is why, finally, Colin Powell is a purer case, and far closer to being a patsy.
From the perspective of history, the entire narrative of Colin Powell, with its ambvalences and inconsistencies, can nonetheless be seen to have been directed toward a single moment. This can be phrased as a question: how does one go about accruing enough rhetorical capital in a single body that one can walk into a room, a room at the very center of the often decentered-seeming spectacle, and pass off as the truth the single utterly incredible lie you've been asked to tell? Despite the particularities and wonders of his career and the facts of his life, there is nothing about Colin Powell's life that is not the answer to this question.
Certainly Colin Powell was the author of his moment; surely he had intentions. That is as nothing. Or, rather, if one cannot grasp from this actual existing event what it means to say that the author is dead and intention is empty, one is likely to grasp little. "The world" (which here means, as so often, the balance of institutional and superinstitutional powers) needed one exact Colin Powell, and turned out to have taken the necessary steps to make sure one would be available.
Authors are Colin Powell writ small, patsies for what the social needs to get done. What's interesting is how the social — how history — has to go about the confabulations, what signs and wonders are needed to take care of business. Significations and form. In the contours of history's methods: the possibility for understanding social production that much better.
For Juliana: After two days at Harvard, we sing of the majestic need for credibility, and the majesty of the accrediting machines.