Are You Ready to Be a Leader?

It takes the bravest person to place their name on a ballot for all of their community to scrutinize them. I know, I've done it three times. In politics there is the dirt, the lies, the endless hours of work, and the uncertainty that you will ever succeed. Public service is not a timid lifestyle. In fact, it is the most difficult and the most rewarding of professions, and I believe that you should step forward – now.

In the book An Unfinished Life, author Robert Dallek quotes John F. Kennedy’s zest for public service on page 120. “Everything now depends on what the government decides. Therefore if you are interested, if you want to participate, if you feel strongly about any public question … it seems to me that governmental service is the way to translate this interest into action.”

If you go into finance, those are the only issues you deal with. Go into education, and you are in that box. If you are in insurance, sales, real estate, etc., those are the only places that you have the opportunity to excel.

But, public service gives you the opportunity to not only test your mettle, but to see a wider world, and how interconnected we all truly are.

South Carolina more than ever needs our best and brightest – and youngest – to make public service one of the goals that they strive for. Why?

Now is the time for hard choices, for new leaders that can sometimes set aside ideology to work together for the greater good. We’re in a mess that was created by both Republicans and Democrats. Yet, we continue to get spoon-fed the same talking points that have failed us for almost two generations – lower taxes and new spending programs have been tried and failed. As a nation, we doubled our national debt from 2001-2009 (under a Republican) and that public debt is now increasing (under a Democrat). We are facing the greatest crisis in eighty years, and no one seems able to come up with any new solutions.

What’s missing? Young leaders. We need young leaders who still have the hope of surprising us – men and women who will put their name on the ballot, win, and then eschew the old party and media driven ideologues to work together to fix a system broken by years of playing favorites.

Are you ready? Do you have the courage to be a leader “in the middle” to help us fix this?