Our View: Getting the leaders we’ve earned

Daylight-saving time isn’t the only thing that arrives early this year. In Washington state, the political cycle is moving up as the primary election changes from September to Aug. 21.

Beginning this year, candidates will file in early June instead of at the end of July. Campaigns will reach highway speed during summer rather than after Labor Day. And cynical voters will begin sooner to complain about having to choose whom to vote against rather than for. Sooner than in past years, you’ll hear office-seekers stressing that they are not politicians – as if that makes them more, rather than less, qualified to engage in a political undertaking.

Such attitudes constitute a sad indictment of the system that remains the world’s model for freedom, openness and self-governance, but has been neglected by those who should nurture it – the people. That includes both voters and the candidates who offer themselves for public service.

The concern that spawned the Leadership Dialogues series that begins today on this page is a growing awareness that the best leaders don’t always show up on the ballots. Some of the choices voters face are downright dismal.

Clearly it’s not because capable leaders are lacking, as the monthly interviews that will appear on this page through Aug. 12 demonstrate. Don’t most of us know skilled, principled people who would be exemplary leaders? Why don’t they run?

Maybe we just don’t do a good enough job of encouraging or recognizing them.

It may well be that we as voters bite too quickly on superficialities and distractions and spend too little time examining the core qualities that mark true leadership. We wind up talking about last year’s errors, who’s on which side of the most volatile controversy, which candidate has the endorsement of which public figure or special-interest organization.

Those items are important, but, as the Leadership Dialogues will demonstrate, there are more substantive considerations in choosing elected leaders. Vision, for example.

In 2007, most of the elections in this region will be for municipal offices, and the consequences will be felt right down the street in our own neighborhoods.

As candidates start listing their qualifications, look for the ones who can tell us not just that they want to lead, but where, and why, and how to get there. Ask for evidence of the skills needed to mobilize a community around a shared goal. Keep an eye out for someone willing to engage others in sorting out the complexity that makes issues issues.

The best candidates won’t have all the answers, but they’ll have some pretty good questions. And some pretty good ears. And a map.

While others talk about our destiny, they’ll talk about our destination.