Winning Entry: The Center for Public Leadership’s “Profiles in Leadership” Essay Contest
by Jonathan Bailey on May 2, 2010 in Culture
‘Profiles in Leadership’ by Jonathan Bailey
Much has been written about Senator Edward M. Kennedy over the last year, most of it by wiser people than me. These words are informed by a fleeting moment in my life when I worked for the Senator not from a lifetime working alongside him. My experience was that of the intern who photocopied memos that he never got to read, of the British student whose accent got him landed giving extra tours of the Capitol to constituents, and of the outsider struggling to understand a nation’s obsession with freedom. My anecdotes are of walking the Senator’s dogs, of hitting three home runs for the TedSox in my opening game, and of my efforts at finding the best free food at lobbyist receptions. But in the midst of all that I found myself being inspired.
The Senator’s legislative record is arguably unparalleled; over three hundred bills that were passed into law which helped students afford college, expanded healthcare coverage, protected minorities through the Voting Rights Act, raised the minimum wage and created a culture of volunteering. He voted against the Iraq War when all around him were in favor, helped bring sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and belatedly assisted the peace process in Northern Ireland. He made mistakes too, sometimes in the most public of ways. By the time I arrived in DC in 2006 these strengths and these challenges were very clear.
What I saw that summer was the Senator trying to create lasting, meaningful, and needed immigration reform. At a time when President Bush was pushing through the surge against collapsing approval ratings and when partisan extremism on both sides was nearing its peak, Senator Kennedy was willing to reach across the aisle and do something that was right for the country. He understood that public leadership is not about ‘me’, it is about ‘us’. Yes, immigration reform would have helped undocumented Irish-Americans, and yes, it would have diluted any Republican gains with Hispanics as a result of reform, but the longer term gains for moderate Republicanism would have been far greater and the benefits to President Bush immediate. Senator Kennedy did not allow parochialism and politicking to get in the way of doing what was needed for the country. To some this may have looked like pragmatism, but to me it showed principal of the most powerful kind.
HKS seems full of students who have asked what they can do and are now set on doing it, but it is also an oddly apolitical environment. The real world of politics is too frequently disappointingly shallow, with people calling for ‘action’ at the slightest flutter of a star spangled banner, but not being willing to act in time or to do what is right for the greater good of the nation. What Senator Kennedy did was to inspire his staff to believe that while there was a political point to what we were doing, what was as important was that we were working to do the right thing. He hired more staff on merit and from outside his home state than any other Senator, drawing some of the best and the brightest to work for him because he wanted to deliver for the American people. He inspired loyalty, trust and belief among his staff that even in the failure of the immigration reform debate we were framing the debate for change for the next round of the battle.
I left these shores to return to Britain feeling as though I had for a moment been part of something unique. Politics is so often portrayed in terms of personality and the narrative of a handful of individuals, but Senator Kennedy taught me how much of leadership is not about the ‘me’. I came to HKS to think about how I could inspire others to change my country for the better. And the best bit? Several other interns from that summer with the Senator in DC had been inspired to do exactly the same thing. That is why the dream shall never die.
