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County needs to incubate future leaders Kevin Blaum In the arena

Sunday November 01, 2009 | 01:00 AM

THE NORTH CAROLINA Institute of Political Leadership (IOPL) was founded in 1987 by a group of North Carolinians “concerned about the lack of integrity found in our political system.”

These residents met regularly and designed a program to improve the quality of political and governmental leadership at the state and local level.

A historical background published on the IOPL’s Web site states: “the only purpose of this unique program is to produce better qualified, ethical, accessible and more representative public leaders in North Carolina’s … governments. The institute is a multi partisan, nonprofit organization, with an annual budget of $350,000 which provides leadership development of persons who have been identified as having the potential to become future public leaders.”

Its faculty and board of directors read like a who’s who of experience, brains and good citizenship. If when you go to vote on Tuesday you discover many of your options lacking these three important characteristics, you will know how those North Carolinians felt in 1987. It’s how you might feel if you visit the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections’ Web site and peruse some of the names in the roster of official candidates for various local school boards.

Upon doing so I came away remembering a newspaper column I once read. It was written by the dean of all political columnists, David Broder.

Broder has been a writer for the New York Times, Congressional Quarterly, the Washington Star and Washington Post. On the morning of his 72nd birthday he watched jet liners crash into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. You’ve seen him guest on network news programs. He has taught at the University of Maryland, Duke and is on the faculty of the IOPL.

In the spring of 1994 he wrote a column about the institute and the scholars he taught there. Those accepted to the IOPL already had demonstrated a powerful interest in the complexities of our representative government and the intricate democratic processes we employ to choose individuals to faithfully represent us.

Broder wrote, “The IOPL always has a vibrant mix of men and women, blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats.” He told his class they were the future leaders of North Carolina, that they would replace outgoing office holders and bring a generation of change to city halls, state houses and Washington, D.C.

He wrote that his students wanted to know who in public office they might emulate, “who are the role models we can follow?” Broder listed the names of those he covered and admired, “assuring them that my list was much longer than they had time to hear.” Then, like a thunderbolt, a student asked, “Why don’t we know more about these people, the good ones?”

Broder stumbled, recovered and then mentioned, “reluctance on the part of reporters to allow our respect for many of the people we cover to creep into our copy.” He then wrote further, “Shutting our eyes to skill and competence and principle in public office is not good journalism either; it’s missing an important part of the story.” He concluded his 1994 column, convinced that people deserve to know – as he did – in public office there are many role models.

If we are to one day improve upon the 2009 list of local candidates, should we not educate future office seekers and expose them to the wisdom of role models who move among us every day in government, business, media and education? North Carolina has an Institute of Political Leadership.

Should we have one here?