Bill Shore’s Letters

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Op-Ed on Public Support and Private Action

Our ability to solve some of the most challenging issues we face does not depend only on an effective president. It depends on effective citizens too.

Originally published: July 2008

In the 1980s and 1990s I helped manage three presidential campaigns for Democratic Sens. Gary Hart and Bob Kerrey. By its nature campaign work is all-consuming. In the often over-hyped excitement of the moment, it is easy to believe the fate of most issues and causes about which we care deeply will be determined by who wins the Oval Office. My work in the years since I've left government and politics suggests, for better or worse, that this is not the case.

Don't get me wrong. Who becomes president makes a huge difference. But the combination of looming recession and future federal deficits exacerbates a political truth that Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have yet to either acknowledge or prepare for. It is that our ability to solve some of the most challenging issues we face does not depend only on an effective president. It depends on effective citizens too.

Poverty-related hunger in America is a good example. The government spends more than $45 billion annually on food and nutrition assistance for low-income families. That's many orders of magnitude greater than any private efforts could yield. So federal policy matters enormously. But so does its implementation at the local level. To a degree not widely understood, that often depends on active citizens and robust, effective, well-led civic organizations.

Many of the children in America who are hungry today are not hungry because of the lack of food assistance programs, but rather because they lack access to the programs that already exist. Sometimes logistical or language barriers prevent their participation. Sometimes there are technical barriers to eligibility or uncooperative local authorities.

Ending childhood hunger in America may require more federal funding, but it also requires more concerted community action designed to ensure that children who are eligible but not enrolled in existing programs are able to access them. For a family facing hunger and wondering how to qualify for food stamps or summer feeding, the most powerful person in the world may not be the commander-in-chief but the local community organizer who helps them navigate the bureaucracy.

There are countless other examples. For the past three years William Raspberry, former op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and now professor of journalism at Duke University, has worked to establish a nonprofit in his small Mississippi hometown of Okolona. It is called Baby Steps and they teach low-income parents how to become better champions for their children inside the school system. Government is responsible for building and running schools. The president, as leader of the government can have a huge impact on their quality. But government isn't and probably shouldn't be responsible for teaching parents to parent. That's something that friends, family, neighbors and engaged citizens, through organizations like Baby Steps, can and must do.

Achieving the right blend of public support and private efforts is also essential to progress on other issues like nutrition education, mentoring, after-school enrichment, drug and alcohol addiction, energy conservation and environmental protection, just to name a few.

If a candidate who embraces and champions such goals succeeds in becoming president, the efforts of nonprofits and civic organizations become more urgent, not less.

It was exciting to see record numbers of voters turn out this primary season, to witness the packed rallies and to watch how grassroots donors via the Internet are changing campaign finance practices. But those who think the process of achieving change ends on Election Day, or becomes the responsibility of the new president and new Congress, will be sorely disillusioned. Solving problems today requires more than participating in the political process. It requires citizens staying involved to ensure that change reaches the people it is supposed to reach.

The hardest work of a great nation has always fallen to its citizens, not just its leaders. I didn't reach this conclusion after leaving presidential politics. I left politics after reaching the conclusion that empowering others to share their strengths is essential to our common agenda, and the agenda of the next president too.

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