First in a series
Politicians like to talk about leadership. There's a reason. They think that if they talk about it enough the voters will actually believe they possess it. But as my grandfather used to tell me when I was boy: Just saying something doesn't make it so.
I have always believed that this is the case with leadership. It must be demonstrated, not described.
Leadership is an abstract concept. As a Supreme Court justice once said in another context: You'll know it when you see it. To be sure, leadership takes many forms. There is local leadership and national leadership. Both are important.
When any of us as an individual demonstrates the courage to stand up and do something that people think can't be done, that action benefits all of us.
I have seen hundreds of examples of local leadership since I began campaigning for president: a school principal whose zero-drug-tolerance policy led to a substantial drop in a drug use by his students; a health care clinic founded by a woman who saw a need in her community and moved to fill it; a young woman law student who organized her law class to help domestic violence survivors win cases against their abusers in court. Each of these acts helped a relatively small community of people, but they benefited us all as a people and a nation.
National leadership is not radically different. It requires the same principles - the courage of conviction, commitment, and a vision of creating what others cannot yet see. It means unlocking the potential of the American people and making the American Dream a dream for all Americans.
I am running because I want an America in which everyone has access to affordable health care. I want an America that rewards hard work and leaves no one behind. And I want an America in which people reach out across race, ethnicity, and generations to the space in our psyche where each of us understands we are part of something larger than ourselves. I want an America that like the hundreds of local leaders I have met in communities all across this country, plays to our better angels.
Make no mistake. The America I envision is within our reach. But we will not achieve it solely through legislation written by Washington politicians. It will require leadership at the highest level - leadership defined by the courage of conviction and commitment that transcends time and political expediency.
National leadership means knowing your end destination and never removing your eyes from that point even though the route to it may not be set in stone. It means getting people to think, believe, see, and do what they might not do otherwise. It means setting the direction, pointing the way, and then mobilizing the idealism, pragmatism - and goodness - of the American people.
This was the way of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King Jr. They did not think small, and they did not take incremental steps. They thought bold, believed bold, and ultimately because of it did bold things. And because they did, today we have Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. Their ability to see what others could not yet see, to think big, to dream, defined not just a generation, but an entire nation.
Like FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Martin Luther King Jr. I don't believe Americans should have to settle.
We should not settle for 44 million Americans without health insurance. We should not settle for 14 million children living in poverty. We should not settle for 13 children who die from guns every day because people in Washington are afraid to take on the NRA.
I have often said during the course of this campaign that there are two types of politicians: those who talk and promise and those who listen and do. The latter is what I mean by leadership.
Today, like the great visionaries of our past, we need a president who is not afraid to think big, to believe in the power of the American people, and to do those things that must be done. We have accomplished much. But there is no denying we have much unfinished business. To complete it, the next president must transcend politics. He must be a leader.
Bill Bradley is a Democratic candidate for president.
