Progressive leaders need to create that dotted line and help society stay above the curve.
In today’s political environment, to be considered a progressive, you need to check certain policy boxes: being pro-choice; empowering civil, women’s, and LGBT rights; and advocating for universal healthcare, a livable wage, affordable higher education, money out of politics, etc. I am very proud to hold all of these beliefs. But being a progressive leader means going beyond just these individual policy positions.
To be a progressive leader, you also must advocate for policies that help humanity succeed – in other words, we need to find ways to stay ahead of the curve – helping people learn faster, ensuring we are governing smarter, and providing our population with the tools needed for today’s world. That’s the type of progressive leader I want to be – a problem solver and an enabler and not a leader who allows for a “catch-up” mentality. I want Kansans and Americans to be prepared to grab onto new opportunities and not frustrated by feeling like a brighter future is out of reach.
There has always been a struggle between segments of society that prefer the status quo (those who tend to be conservative) and those who advocate for change (those who tend to be progressive). This is nothing new in human history and not necessarily a bad dynamic. Both change and status quo can be positive or negative depending on the circumstances. Often, they can be both at the exact same time.
Over the last century, however, the world has gone through transformational shifts – social changes, technological changes, climate changes, political changes -- like at no other time in human history. The widening divide between conservatives and progressives is largely due to how individual people, different groups, leaders, and governments deal with this tsunami of change and unpredictability.
In Thomas Friedman’s new book, Thank You for Being Late, he provides a diagram (see above) of the trends of human adaptability and technological change. Humanity’s ability to adapt to change is a steady incline while the rate of technological change experienced in the last half-century has been like a hockey stick. Right now, we are at a point where humanity is not keeping up with the rates of technological change (and I’d argue other types of change like climate and societal, too). A significant part of the world’s population feels legitimately left behind – like they are drowning and there’s no known direction to swim, no life raft there to save the day, and the sharks are circling.
As a leader, there are two main reactions: 1) Pretend like the change can be slowed, stopped, or reversed. This tends to be the more conservative approach – feeling nostalgic about “how things used to be” and utilizing fear of the future as marketing tools. Or 2) Find ways to help our people succeed in keeping up with the train that has already left the station and is not going to slow down. This tends to be the progressive approach. This would be my approach.
For my Millennial generation, we will constantly have to adapt to an ever-evolving world because the rate of change is likely only to accelerate during our lifetimes. If we are not progressive in mindset, we will be left behind. Most of us, Millennials especially, understand that we need to find ways to help ourselves and our children adapt and succeed as our world moves more toward technical automation, changes in climate and the environment, and an ever more integrated world. Our world is not and will not be the world we were born into only two or three short decades ago.
Let me give you a personal example. I come from a middle-class family. Like many of my generation across the country, I’m saddled with somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of student loan debt (yes, I said a quarter of a million, a quarter of a million I usually try to forget) because I chose to go to graduate school. I look at it has an investment in my future and do not regret the decision -- at least not yet. However, taking on that type of debt load at such an early age to give myself a leg up professionally, doing so potentially hurt my ability to make other normal life decisions, such as buying a home, starting a family, creating a business, etc.
Just a generation ago, our parents did not have to make the same choice. They could go to college and even graduate school without this type of crippling debt. As you can imagine, I’m a strong advocate for ensuring we get the costs of higher education back to an affordable rate. This is not only an individual economic issue, but when you have a generation of youth that cannot afford to do any of the activities I noted, that hurts the economy of the entire society.
It was because of Obama’s progressive attitudes that his Administration created options for student loan repayment that allowed me and millions of others to make this investment, pay it back at a rate I could afford based on my income at any given time, and potentially have some of it be forgiven after a set amount of time. If it wasn’t for the Income-Based Payment plan, I would not have been able to start my own organization. This program helped me get ahead despite the financial burden of the student loans. But we need to do better and ensure students do not have to take on these levels of debt in the first place. We should make education and training affordable and accessible in an era that will demand consistent learning and adapting.
However, my main point is that even someone like me, who came from a strong educational background and affluence, needed this help and would not have been able to fully pull myself up “by my own bootstraps” if these government programs were not in place. Imagine the hurdles that someone without the advantages I was lucky enough to be born into must deal with in order to succeed. We all need help to succeed. No one does it completely alone.
At the end of the day, being a progressive leader means:
- Understanding the world in which we live today, not hanging onto a world that no longer exists,
- Leading with progressive policy positions,
- Looking for forward-thinking and innovative solutions to take care of our people,
- Putting the well-being and quality of life of our citizenry first, and understanding that doing so means that everyone, at all levels of society, will be better off for doing so,
- Ensuring our government’s role should be to create solutions to the challenges that our society faces,
- Sustaining our environment to ensure generations to come can enjoy our world, and
- Enacting programs that allow our citizens to be competitive in a globalizing world.
It’s about getting us ahead of the curve and creating that dotted line to success in an ever-changing world. It’s about creating opportunities, not just for the people born in affluence. Most of our leaders in D.C. and those wishing to be elected into office seem to have lost their long-term vision and would rather reminiscence romantically about the past instead of seeing the what lies ahead. We need progressive leaders who not only hit those policy position boxes but have the foresight and vision to craft actual policy to get us ahead of the curve. We cannot afford anymore empty solutions in the 4th District of Kansas or across America. The days of pandering with flashy sound bites with no policy substance need to be over.
We need to move forward. We need to be progressive. I can be that progressive leader for the 4th District, for Kansas, and for America.
To learn more about my candidacy and platform for the 4th District Kansas Congressional seat, please visit www.lauralombardforkansas.com.
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