Broadening Our Identities

As we choose our next president, Americans not only want someone to ably handle a crisis after a hypothetical 3 a.m. phone call. We also want someone who reinforces our identity and tells us who we are. As I argue in The Powers to Lead, we judge leaders not only on the effectiveness of their actions, but also on the meaning that they create and teach. Barack Obama's supporters have argued that his African background and his boyhood running around in rice paddies in Indonesia give him a rare experience for American presidents.

Most leaders feed upon the existing identity and solidarity of their groups. In that sense they are insular, and define their responsibilities to their group in a traditional manner. But some leaders see moral obligations beyond their immediate group and educate their followers. For example, Nelson Mandela could easily have chosen to define his group as Black South Africans and sought revenge for the injustice of decades of apartheid and his own imprisonment. Instead, he worked tirelessly to expand the identity of his followers both by words and deeds. In one important symbolic gesture, he appeared at a rugby game wearing the jersey of the South African Springboks, a team that had previously signified White South African nationalism. He seized the teaching moment at the end of apartheid.

After World War II, when Germany had invaded France for the third time in 70 years, the French leader Jean Monnet decided that revenge upon a defeated Germany would produce yet another tragedy, and instead invented a plan for the gradual development of a European Coal and Steel Community that eventually evolved into today's Europe Union. European integration has now helped to make war between France and Germany virtually unthinkable.

Faced with a campaign crisis over incendiary remarks by his former pastor Jerimiah Wright, Barack Obama did not simply distance himself from Wright, but made use of the teaching moment to deliver a speech that should serve to broaden the understanding and identities of both white and black Americans. That is leadership.

Comments

[craigstone]

Barack did a great job of changing the subject and making excuses for hate speech. It is very sad that anyone would support hate speech. It is wrong for Wright, Dobson, and Falwell. It is certainly wrong for anyone running for public office to sit through and support both by not objecting and providing financial support to something so wrong. There is no way he can win the white house now. I heard no solutions from the speech. I wonder what the teaching to young people in that church of those comments was.....

[Charmed]

The lesson was to "think" about race in America but if you didn't get it that's okay. I'm just wondering will people be endlessly talking about these 2 clips from 2 different sermons in 2 different years, years apart.

[LizM]

I just have one question, or two, for you. Would you please explain to me why you did not vociferously support Senator Biden's candidacy? I mean, I would have thought that, for you, that choice would have been pretty much a no-brainer, as they say.

And, while you're at it, maybe you could try to explain why it might be that all the foreign policy thinkers who have blogged here on presidential politics and international affairs have chosen to completely ignore the impeccable and unimpeachable foreign policy credentials, not to mention the only viable and comprehensive strategy to move toward a sustainable political settlement in Iraq, that a Biden administration would have provided. I have my own suspicions that would explain this curious behavior but I would be very interested to know your take on this.

[rudyinbama]

It's because this was a HISTORIC nomination. Forget REAL experience and knowledge - from the very beginning of this race, the media had us picking between gender and skin color.

[Fabienne]

Senator Biden has the same baggage as Senator Clinton: he was a long-time Iraq war supporter. And he made the all-time pro-Raygun statement by a Democrat: "It's time Democrats faced the fact that Raygun was a hero and a great president," something which neither of the candidates left standing have said.