Powell’s Next Step Throws Curve Into the GOP Race : Politics: Potential rivals, contributors wait anxiously as retired general ponders a run for the White House.

NORFOLK, Va. — Three weeks before the Gulf War began, Gen. Colin L. Powell took a final inspection tour of the troops to assure that they were prepared for the coming campaign.

“It’s gut-check time,” he told a group of tense but battle-ready Marines at a front-line encampment.

It’s that time again for the now-retired general.

Powell on Friday concluded a triumphal five-week nationwide book tour with a visit to the sprawling Norfolk Navy base, where he was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand sailors and dependents, many of whom urged him to run for President.

He may be listening.

The prospect of Powell’s entering the race is “more likely now than it was a month ago,” when the tour started, said one close Powell associate who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But he insisted that Powell had not yet made up his mind, a process of introspection and consultation with family and friends that Powell says will take two to three weeks and will end with an announcement sometime between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.

Already, however, Powell’s presence looms over the Republican field like a storm cloud; the race is virtually inert as candidates, contributors and primary voters await Powell’s word. And the mere possibility of Powell’s entering the race has already deeply divided the conservative wing of the GOP.

Powell has sized up his potential rivals for the GOP nomination and, by the accounts of those who have spoken with him, considers them able to be beaten. He has put out feelers to political professionals who would form the cadre of his campaign organization. He has been assured by top financiers that he can secure whatever money he needs to mount a credible and successful campaign. He has also conducted a first-class tour of the battlefield--at the expense of his publisher, Random House.

An adviser to one of the GOP candidates said Powell’s 25-city tour was worth $8 million inflattering, free publicity.

What remains, according to his friends and advisers, is Powell’s own decision of whether he has what it takes to fight for the Republican presidential nomination--and win it.

Powell and his closest friends insist that personal considerations will weigh more heavily in his decision than political issues. Many closest to Powell have warned of the incalculable personal costs of seeking the presidency--the intense scrutiny of the media, the loss of privacy, the potential physical danger.

Powell says in his autobiography “My American Journey” that running for office “requires a calling that I do not yet hear.”

But those words were written last summer, before he heard the cheering and saw the thousands of people lined up to get a five-second glimpse of their warrior hero.

Those weeks on the road have had a clear effect.

“The Colin Powell we are seeing now is very different from the Colin Powell of a few months ago,” said political analyst Stuart Rothenberg.

For example, Powell has begun taking carefully modulated rhetorical positions that seem designed to reduce opposition from the party’s right wing. This week, for example, Powell declared that he supports most of the tenets of the GOP’s “contract with America.”

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He also said in a television interview that the Christian right deserves credit “for focusing our attention again on the fact that we are a nation under God, focusing attention on the family, focusing attention on the need for structure in the home, focusing attention on the need to love and raise children in a caring environment.”

He added that while he believes the decision to have an abortion rests with a woman, her doctor and her faith, “I am not in favor of abortion.” He also said he opposed public funding of abortions for poor women or government employees.

Those positions have caused some on the right to warm to Powell. Former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, for example, has begun arguing in favor of a Powell candidacy.

Other conservatives remain furiously opposed, fearing that Powell will slow or reverse the revolution set in motion by the GOP sweep of Congress engineered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich and threatening a revolt within the ranks against a man who once described himself as a moderate “Rockefeller Republican.”

Conservative GOP candidate Patrick J. Buchanan said in a television interview Friday that Republicans would be betraying their own revolution if they nominated Powell.

“He agrees with Bill Clinton far more, far more closely than he agrees with mainstream Republicans,” Buchanan said. “What the Powell nomination is, is an effort by the [Washington] elites to put one of their own in charge of the Republican Party before the Republican Party and the conservatives take over the White House.”

“I will fight him all the way to this convention,” Buchanan said on NBC-TV’s “Today” program. “I will win this battle.”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who has worked for both Gingrich and Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, another GOP presidential hopeful, adds that Powell “has a disarming personality, a charm and a charisma you cannot deny. But the conservatives are not looking for personality, they’re looking for commitment and consistency.”

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In a brief session with reporters at a Norfolk bookstore Friday, Powell addressed the question of whether he was tailoring his remarks to try to appeal to conservatives.

“People are spending too much time going over various words,” Powell said. “What I really believe is that we are a nation put here by divine providence. There are some aspects of the [conservative] legislative agenda I have disagreements with.”

In the meantime, Rothenberg notes, as Powell positions himself for a run, the rest of the field has been frozen in place.

“The interest in him is so great that it’s dampened interest in everybody else. He has so much chemistry, so much pizazz, in comparison everyone else looks bland. All the attention is on Powell, and everyone else is traipsing along in the sludge.”

The immediate victim of a Powell entry into the Republican race would be the putative front-runner, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, most analysts agree. But, in truth, none of the candidates so far has seemed capable of generating the sort of enthusiasm Powell has seen in cities across the country.

In Norfolk, service members, base workers and their families lined up for hours at a bookstore for autographed copies of Powell’s book.

Powell sat behind a mahogany desk with his felt-tip pen as aides slid one book after another to him as people passed by. Behind him in the cavernous base exchange was a large portrait of him which read, “The American Dream, The American Hero.”

Most in the crowd seemed to share the conviction that Powell would make a fine President and should run.

“Colin Powell is a great man. He’s my hero for what he’s achieved,” said Seaman James Brodhacker, a ship’s store clerk. “He knows politics and he knows how the system works. He comes from a minority family and seems to understand poor people.”

Over the next few weeks, Powell must decide whether his current celebrity can translate into true electoral popularity. As Powell himself put it at a book-sale event earlier in the week, “your enemies don’t come out to buy a book and have you sign it.”

Asked to reflect on his book tour, Powell talked like the silver-tongued political pro that he is rapidly becoming.

He had learned from his travels “that America is a marvelous, great country. Its people are hard at work, but there are some problems. Some are not sharing in the prosperity . . . and there still are some serious racial problems. But I come away from these five weeks very optimistic about America.”

Jackson reported from Norfolk and Broder from Washington.