I heard Hillary Clinton speak a few years ago.  I remember feeling inspired by what she said.  I can’t even remember her message, but I remember feeling uplifted and motivated to change the world.

Hillary Clinton does not normally have this effect on me.  I strongly disagree with the big-government policies that she is proposing.  The only way I’d ever vote for her is if she’s running against Mike Huckabee.

But I will always remember how she inspired me. 

At the time, I was adjusting to life in New York City and a new job that demanded most of my time and little of my creativity.  It sometimes seemed that my boss’s belief about human nature was true: that fear and greed make the world go round.  [I felt so "lost" once that I dropped into a church service one Sunday, just to see if anything there made any sense.  It didn't, and only made my cynicism worse.]

I guess what I’m trying to say is: at that point in my life, I was hungry for inspiration, and all it took was a politician to come along and talk about ideals….anything besides dollars and markets, and I felt myself believing.

Maybe that’s the first true job of any leader.  To help us find the best parts of ourselves, to give us hope, to give us a reason to get up in the morning, to believe.

Caroline Kennedy believes this and is supporting Obama. Excerpt (thanks for passing along, Dad!):

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

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