"He will have a role as one of my advisers," Barack Obama said on NBC's "Today" in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell, a four-star general and President George W. Bush's former secretary of state, endorsed him.
"Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that's a good fit for him, is something we'd have to discuss," Obama said.
Being a top presidential adviser, especially on foreign policy, would be familiar ground to Powell on a subject that's relatively new to the freshman Illinois senator. Obama has struggled to establish his foreign policy credentials against Republican candidate John McCain, a decorated military veteran, former prisoner of war and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In the NBC interview, Obama said Powell did not give him a heads-up before he crossed party lines and endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate on the network's "Meet the Press" a day earlier.
In that interview, Powell called Obama a "transformational figure" in U.S. history and expressed disappointment in some of McCain's campaign tactics. But, Powell said, he didn't plan to hit the campaign trail with Obama before the Nov. 4 election.
"I won't lie to you, I would love to have him at any stop," Obama said with a grin Monday. "Obviously, if he wants to show up he's got an open invitation."
Powell's endorsement came just hours after Obama's campaign disclosed that it raised US$150 million in September -- obliterating the old record of $66 million it had set only one month earlier.
He expressed disappointment in the negative tone of McCain's campaign, his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate and their decision to focus in the closing weeks of the contest on Obama's ties to 1960s-era radical William Ayers, saying "it goes too far."
At a boisterous rally Sunday, Obama said McCain was "out of ideas and almost out of time."
He and his aides appear so confident of his prospects that apart from a brief stop in Madison, Wis., next Thursday, Obama currently has no plans during the next 10 days to return to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Hampshire or any other state that voted for John Kerry in 2004.
Instead, he intends to spend two days this week in Florida, where early voting begins on Monday, and travel to Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico and possibly Nevada and Indiana. Those states hold 97 electoral votes combined, and Bush won all in 2004.
Obama also may stop in West Virginia, where his campaign recently bought statewide television advertising in a late attempt to put the state's five electoral votes into serious contention.
