BRACK: Doing the right thing for South Carolina

Commentary by Andy Brack, editor and publisher  | With statewide elections a month away, let’s think seriously about leadership.

What kind of leaders do we want  in the Palmetto State? Do we want leaders who will continue to do what they’ve been doing for years?  If so, how’s that working out? South Carolina continues to be at the wrong end of too many lists.

Or do we want leaders with vision who will take chances and try new things — leaders who will work collaboratively to develop policies and strategies that will, ahem, make South Carolina great?

Two men from the trenches of state government who have written books on leadership have lessons for those who want to make a difference.

Jason Kander, who narrowly lost a U.S. Senate race in MIssouri in 2016, is a former secretary of state who served in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer.  Earlier this month, Kander bowed out of a bid for Kansas City mayor to deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that this generation is selfish,” he wrote in November 2016. “This is a generation that cares more about ideas than ideology and measures patriotism not by a politician’s eagerness to go to war but by their willingness to do what’s right no matter the political cost.”

In a recent podcast with CBS News, Kander described how he thought most people got into politics to make a change in the world.  To be successful, they have to focus on the change, not get caught up in politics of the system, as he explained in his book, Outside the Wire: 10 Lessons I’ve Learned in Everyday Courage.

“The secret to adulthood is that 99 percent of the time when we’re facing a so-called really hard decision, the truth is we’re just trying to decide whether to do the right thing,” Kander said.  “And when you recognize that, you realize just do the right thing and have enough game – be good enough at this – to defend that decision.”

But the system can reshape elected officials and make them forget why they ran in the first place, as former S.C. Rep. Anton Gunn knows.

Gunn, now an executive at MUSC in Charleston, represented Kershaw and Richland counties before he left to work on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and, later, as a top administration official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

This week, Gunn recalled how he became frustrated when good ideas got shot down for political reasons or because he was a freshman, a Democrat or black.  

“I only stayed in the legislature two years because I didn’t feel like there was enough service happening,” he said, defining service as working to improve everyone’s lives and helping people’s dreams come true.  “There were a lot of things happening, some of them good and many of them bad, but there wasn’t enough service.”

State lawmakers should realize they represent more than their district, he said.  They make decisions for the whole state.

“The political expediency of focusing on right now is what has most of America paralyzed,” said Gunn, author of the new book, The Presidential Principles: How to Inspire Action and Create Lasting Impact.  “We love to do what’s easy instead of doing what’s hard.”

Real leaders, he said, focus on the long term, such as how the late Gov. Carroll Campbell prioritized economic development that led to the state’s currently strong automotive culture.  Or how former Gov. Jim Hodges prioritized early childhood education to help children get a leg up on the world.

“Every lawmaker should get together and think about 30 years from now and how they won’t be in the legislature and how do you focus on making a decision today that will ensure that South Carolina is much better 30 years from now than it could ever today….

“It ain’t rocket science.  There’s nothing new under the sun.  The question is do you have the intestinal fortitude or the altruism to believe that I should do more for my brother or sister.  How do we close the gaps?”

Courage.  Intestinal fortitude.  It’s all the same — being willing to put the job on the line to make a difference.  That’s what South Carolina needs now.

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