From Friday's Financial Times:

Colin Powell would be willing to continue serving as secretary of state in a second Bush administration if he were able to take a grip on the direction of US foreign policy, a senior official said on Thursday.

According to conventional wisdom in Washington, even if President George W. Bush should win a second term in the November election, Mr Powell would take the opportunity to leave office after the frustrations of being overruled on important policy decisions by a White House in the thrall of neo-conservative ideology.

"He could possibly stay on for a year or 18 months, especially if he is told that the ship of state is available at the helm," the official said.

Mr Powell, who is 67 and had surgery for prostate cancer last December, would not want to serve another four years.

The official, who asked not to be named, said there was a possibility that the influential neo-conservatives were "in complete retreat and turning on themselves" after the setbacks in Iraq, and that there would be a "massive exiting". But he also conceded that they could simply be "hunkered down" and might return.

What I find interesting about all this isn't the internecine squabbling, which is, of course, old news at this point. Rather, it's the unquestioned presumption that, if only the neocons could be dislodged, the helm of the ship of state would suddenly be available for Secretary Powell to assume.

Which rather inevitably leads one to ask: In most administrations, isn't that guiding-the-ship-of-state job already taken?

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