So Barack Obama said that Colin Powell will have "a role as one of my advisers." What should Obama have Powell do?

A cabinet post is extremely unlikely. You don’t go from Secretary of State to anything else — it’s been a longstanding tradition, stretching back to Washington, that the Secretary of State is first among equals in the cabinet, as a friend pointed out to me over dinner this weekend. (A subcabinet post would be, accordingly, an insult.) Which is all well and good, since you don’t really want a Bush cabinet official — who isn’t Bob Gates! — returning to service in a Democratic administration. 

What would be both valuable to Obama (and the country) and a good use of Powell’s talents would be to use him as a special presidential envoy to some intractible problem. Powell’s reputation may have taken a beating among liberals in the U.S. — all of it deserved — but internationally he remains both a widely-respected figure and a known quantity. It would signal a real seriousness if Obama dispatched Powell to, say, broker an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Powell has dealt with pretty much every Sunni Arab government in the region for two decades, as well, and would make an excellent candidate to represent the U.S. at, say, a regional summit on Iraq. And I’m sure Powell would leap at the opportunity to help resolve the war he undoubtedly regrets helping start.