Chapter Six C: Leadership

It wasn’t the kind of speech that historians would record as “notable” in the launching of a politician’s climb to fame. In fact, Pol was a little embarrassed that this was her first public address after the exhortation of the architect to lead, guide, and inspire. Hamilton Hall on the Franklin College Campus was small and the audience was mostly students who had various pressures to attend the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Challenge. Her speech was part of the Leadership Lecture Series and was expected to have a certain degree of scholarly dryness to it. It was, after all, referred to as a lecture.

But there was also a scattering of local townspeople, news reporters, and faculty in the room, and as Pol scanned the audience from her seat as she awaited the introduction, she saw Aaron case and an older gentleman slip into the room and gingerly sit near the back. He must still be hurting from the accident, she thought. It is amazing that he made the trip down here in his condition. But she had been confident that he would. Her speech—her lecture—was prepared for him. This was her opportunity to close the deal.

“…the Honorable Congresswoman Polyhymnia Stamos, representing the sixth Congressional District of the State of Indiana. Congresswoman Stamos.” The professor introducing her stood aside from the podium and Pol stepped up smiling.

“Thank you Dr. Pribush,” Pol began. This was almost like addressing the Daughters of the American Revolution in their speech contest when she was in high school. You had to remember who you were addressing. “President Mosely, Faculty, Students, Members of the Press, and friends of Franklin College, it is an honor to be selected as this year’s speaker for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Challenge. I like the ring of that, for there is one thing that Dr. King did more than anything else, and that was to challenge. He challenged the people of his generation and the people of my generation, and the people of your generation.

“I ask for a show of hands with some trepidation. I’m not a comedian and it seems like that is their standard, but I’d like those of you who were born after the death of Dr. King in 1969 to raise your hands.” Most of the attendees raised their hands, including several professors. “Very good,” Pol continued. “Why are you here?”

The question was abrupt and caught people off guard. They began to shift and look at each other.

“Why are you here to memorialize a man that can be no more real to you than Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson. If this talk were the Thomas Jefferson Leadership Challenge, would you be sitting here? But Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson were all great leaders. Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery. Woodrow Wilson advanced the concept of the League of Nations to put an end to world strife. But none of them have their own national holiday. We lump them all together under President’s Day. But Martin Luther King Jr., who held no public office and who died before most of you were born has a holiday and a leadership challenge lecture that you sponsor academically and attend emotionally. Why are you here?”

Pol gave a small smile and looked around at the room in good humor for a moment, then continued somewhat sheepishly.

“I’m sorry. I forgot that the first rule of public speaking for a politician is to start with a joke and get the audience loosened up,” she said. There was a spattering of relieved laughter around the room. “If the audience throws tomatoes in the first five minutes, then they have nothing to look forward to.” More relaxed laughter. “Well, bear with me. Those who have heard me speak before can ascertain that it gets much worse the longer I go.” Now the audience shifted in their seats to a more comfortable position.

“But I wonder, why are you here?” Pol removed the wireless microphone from the stand and began to move down the steps from the dais to the front row of listeners. She stopped in front of a man she estimated to be roughly her own age. “Are you a faculty-member here at Franklin?” She asked him. “Yes,” he answered. “Why are you here?”

“Dr. King had a profound impact on our lives today,” the professor responded. “This is an opportunity to relive some of that cultural change and become inspired to take it forward.”

“That’s a great answer. What subject do you teach?”

“Sociology.”

“Thank you.” Pol moved up the aisle and spoke to a young woman. “Why are you here?”

“It was required for my history class,” she grinned at Pol as if having given her a very smart answer.

“You get an A for attendance,” Pol smiled back. She continued to move up the aisle asking the same question to random people. The answers became more thoughtful as she went.

“To learn about something I’ve had no experience with.”

“To hear a U.S. Representative speak.”

“To honor a great leader.”

Pol approached the back row where Aaron was seated and repeated her question to him. She held the microphone toward him and he looked directly into her eyes.

“I came to find out why you think it is all worth it, and how you think it could be different,” he said to her. She smiled at him and without raising the mic to her own lips quietly said “Thank you.” She made her way back to the podium before she resumed her speech. There was a shuffle as people shifted in their seats waiting. At last she stood erect and faced them.

“John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, icons of the 1960s all died before I was ten years old. They all died as martyrs. They all died for what they believed in. So did Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi. You may not recognize those names. They were the men who flew American flight 11 and United flight 175 into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

“What is so great about dying for what you believe in?” The room was silent. Pol looked around at the audience intently before continuing.

“What is a mystery to me is that all these men had noble beliefs. Oh, understand, I know the difference between a self-sacrificer and a murderer. I make no justifications for the acts of terrorists, nor do I denigrate the lives of the Kennedys and King by comparison. What I am asking you is what makes a belief worth dying for, and you must answer as well the question, what makes a cause worth killing for and dying for?

“Over two hundred fifty U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan and over twenty-one hundred in Iraq since the first declaration of war in March of 2002. Two thousand seven hundred fifty two died in the World Trade Center. Those are the numbers. You are smart people, draw some conclusions.

“Here is your Martin Luther King Jr. Day Challenge: Stop dying for what you believe in and start living for it. If we want the world to adopt our form of democratic government, and make no mistake, that is a stated goal of our involvement in the middle east, then we are going to have to show the world why it is better than any other kind of government in the world. That evidence has to be something besides the ability to buy more video games. It has to be based on something other than rabid consumerism. It needs to be based on an active desire to improve the conditions of the world in which we live. We can only show how good it is by caring for those around us. I don’t just mean giving cash to relief funds, though we need that badly enough with the natural disasters that we’ve seen this year. I mean that we need to make good decisions on how we use our natural resources. We need to support farmers in Brazil so they don’t need to destroy our the world’s rainforests in order to get what we have. As long as the world is divided into haves and have nots, the have nots there will be people dying for what they believe and killing for it as well.”

“There is no cause being served by our young men and women dying, no matter how willing to die for what they believe they are. And I would plant that message in the heart of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, and Russia. But it won’t take root unless it grows first in Indianapolis, Washington, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. If we would let freedom ring throughout the world, then we need to show that people can live in peace and prosperity in the free portions of the world.

“That was the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The people of this country must accept each other before they can hope to be accepted as leaders of the world. Though it becomes a cliché, I will dare to repeat that a leader goes in front of those he or she leads. It is the slaver who drives people forward with a whip from behind.” Pol’s speech was not over, but Aaron had been won from the beginning. She took harsh words and brought them to people who didn’t want to hear them in a way that made them glad they had heard them. He was pretty sure there hadn’t been a speech writer putting these things together. No Washington speech writer at least. It had come from the heart and he was convinced. Live for what you believe. He was ready.

As the audience stood in applause Aaron saw a figure move up the aisle to his left. A heavy man in a pin-striped suit. Aaron flipped open his cell phone and snapped a picture. It wasn’t good, but he saved it anyway. It was too weird.

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