Leadership is a lot harder than it looks to people who aren't putting themselves on the line to do it. President Bush reminds us of how hard his work is, and he's right. Just because we don't believe he's a hard worker himself — that he'd consider reading any book with footnotes hard work — doesn't mean his job is easy.
Someone's got to do it. And sometimes the people desperate to do it will come up short.
In my professional career, I have worked with or employed four former leaders of professional associations, one former Congressional staffer, and less closely with one political party ex-chair. Each of them was a decent human being (correction — one simply pretended) and had risen to a professional level of presumed competence.
Yet each left the paying job within two years. And of those five to whom I was close enough to know the circumstances, all left involuntarily. With two, we wondered why we waited so long to fire them. And only two would receive even a conditional reference from me in the future.
This was a pretty compelling sample. I've encountered many volunteer association chairs over the years, and know and respect a number of them. But of those I got close to, in the real world of work, I only met people with key pieces missing. You just didn't see it right away. Or you saw it and talked yourself out of it because of their resume.
And the practice they'd had being leaders.
These people achieve apotheosis early on as they ascend the student council ladder. They're wholesome kids, bright, inoffensively attractive, willing to take on unstimulating tasks and — though they may have other interests, even passions — they take on the permanent markings not of jocks, brains or musicians but of leaders.
In high school, you cannot win this imprint without some official endorsement — not so much from peers, but from teachers, administrators, moms and dads, and other leaders. You can't be a rebel or a truly disruptive creative force. If you aren't actually what they want, you learn what parts of yourself to suppress and what to amplify.
If you have this early hunger to be a leader, you realize you must become safe for consumption.
Other leaders emerge later, from different experiences, but many of them can take the glory or leave it. They take risks, win a few, lose a few. Leading is what they do, not what they must be.
Not every student council suck-up goes into politics, and not every one who does is necessarily compulsive about it. Some are probably burdened by expectations and do it against their own natures. The names Mark Dayton and Patrick Kennedy spring to mind.
I don't personally know any of the candidates in the 5th Congressional District race, so it might be unfair to apply my subjective judgment — but I'm going to do it anyway. The issue differences among the various DFL hopefuls were negligible; the differences in experience only sifted the field; the intangibles ultimately distinguish them.
Two DFL candidates who said they'll bypass the endorsement process to run in a primary give me that old student council leader vibe.
Keith Ellison took it to the rest of the DFL field to win the party endorsement yesterday. He showed up better organized, with more support, and as a more compelling figure than any of the competition. Gail Dorfman, Jack Nelson-Palmeyer and Jorge Saavedra gave it their best shot and then bowed out with grace. But Mike Erlandson and Ember Reichgott-Junge had already decided to take their chances in the primary and threw up clouds to obscure their middling support before withdrawing.
They're leaders.
Erlandson (I was for party endorsement before I was against it) couldn't mount a competitive challenge even with Sabo's blessing. Reichgott-Junge entered the race intending to run in a primary; despite her past record of achievements in the state legislature, she couldn't muster much enthusiasm, either. Still, they press forward, because here is a shot at the mother of all student councils.
If either of these folks does better against Ellison with the general public, then I truly don't understand politics. Personally, I think they are delusional.
Speaking of which, can you imagine a race between Ellison and Michele Bachmann?
Talk about the carpenter and the jackass...
