A New Type of Leadership

Many of us are skeptical when a candidate like Senator Barack H. Obama appears in the national spotlight. His promise to create a new kind of politics seems unsubstantiated and unrealistic. It is easy to assume that he is just a pretty face, one that will fade away as the long campaign season takes its toll.

This is false. Obama has the real-world experience and commitment to practical policymaking to catapult his growing campaign to a successful presidency. Far more importantly, however, our preoccupation with these questions has distracted us from the bigger and less tangible crisis that we face today: as the Bush administration continues its seventh year and the Iraq war its fourth, the country has lost faith in its government. Increasingly, Americans feel that real power rests not with the citizens but with the rich and well-connected. We live in an age when Jack Abramoff can buy influence on Capitol Hill and the president can lie to Congress, the country, and the world. Americans are not just looking for new leaders; they are looking for an entirely new type of leadership.

Obama stands for something greater than a rehashing of establishment politics. He is committed to changing a broken system by reaffirming the democratic principles that define this country at its best. In this effort to return government to its constituents, the campaign is as much a movement as a political exercise. It has drawn thousands of young people to the political process in a way unseen since Robert F. Kennedy ’48. It has focused on small donations—already having garnered over 100,000 contributors, 90 percent of whom gave under $100. It has challenged people to engage and volunteer actively, not just to sit back or write a check.

Obama has been committed to this transformation since long before he arrived on Capitol Hill. Pundits who call Obama inexperienced don’t count the time he spent as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, steering its 80 editors through contentious debates and moving them beyond petty power struggles. Nor do they take note of the time he spent as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago, empowering people who had no means of ensuring a better future. They don’t count the eight years he spent in the Illinois State Senate, creating consensus to improve the lives of Illinois citizens. And they do not count the formative years he spent in Indonesia, where he developed a true international perspective. Now, Senator Obama has drawn on these formative experiences with great success, first and foremost with respect to the situation in Iraq.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has actively worked to embrace the proposals of the Iraq Study Group and has proposed a comprehensive plan, which sets benchmarks for Iraq’s progress, encourages outreach to Iraq’s neighbors for help, and establishes oversight to correct the mistake of giving the President a blank check for an unplanned war.

And unlike so many others, Barack Obama had the ability to recognize the foolishness of invading Iraq before the war began, and he was willing to stake his political future on defending that belief. He had the foresight to predict in October 2002 that “even a successful war against Iraq [would] require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” He demonstrated the sincerity and forward thinking that will be crucial to restoring our international credibility in 2009.

But Senator Obama has also devoted his attention to less glamorous issues like helping to ensure additional funding to secure former Soviet nuclear materials and limiting access to conventional arms. He has sponsored bills that raise fuel-economy standards and directly confront the genocide in Darfur.

This term, Senator Obama has spearheaded initiatives to demand governmental accountability. He fought to allow all Americans to see exactly how their money is being spent, and demanded that senators no longer be able to request legislative earmarks anonymously. He worked with Senator Russ Feingold to implement common-sense ethics reforms, preventing members of Congress from accepting gifts from lobbyists and restricting the revolving door between lobbying firms and Capitol Hill. And that commitment has extended to the campaign trail, where he does not accept any campaign contributions from lobbyists or interest groups.

Senator Obama’s dogged pursuit of ethics reform, like his commitment to broadening participation in his presidential campaign, represents the promise of an Obama administration. It is time that we move past traditional ideologies, past petty squabbles, and on to the genuine issues with which Americans are concerned. There is so much more our government can and should do. We don’t just need a strong leader—we need a visionary. Barack Obama offers pragmatic means for America to dream again.

Nathaniel J. Lubin ’09 is a government concentrator in Lowell House and the director of Harvard Students for Barack Obama. Robert G. King ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House. Eva Z. Lam ’10 lives in Thayer Hall. Both King and Lam are assistant directors for Harvard Students for Barack Obama.