Target Field
Last week I had the opportunity to take a tour of Target Field. It was a few days after they started to lay down the sod and the rich, green grass seemed to bring the building to life. It wasn’t hard to picture Carlos Gomez making a leaping catch in center field, or Justin Morneau driving a home run into the plaza beyond right field.
When it opens next year, Target Field is going to be a major asset to Minneapolis and to the entire state. But as I stared over the field and up to the Minneapolis skyline I couldn’t help but think back to the time when the Twins ballpark was a dream of a few believers, a hot button issue among voters, and a test of the leadership of this community. In that way, Target Field is more than a ballpark. It’s a symbol of Minnesota’s long tradition of strong leaders who will look past what’s popular to do what’s right.
“Leadership” is a concept that is difficult to define, but its importance to a community is impossible to overstate. And in an era when shouting has started to replace discourse, and outrage overshadows nuance, leadership only becomes more central to a community’s ability to move forward for the common good.
Minnesota has been lucky to have a rich history of great leaders, both in the public and private sectors. If you look at all of the elements that make this a great state to live in, you will find leaders who have championed each of these causes. Whether it is education, the arts, our natural resources, our economic strength, or our world-class health care facilities, these assets don’t just build themselves. They are the result of passionate and visionary leaders.
In this blog, I hope to highlight some vital elements of leadership, and to applaud those in our community who are rising to the challenges we’re facing. I believe it is important to call out good leadership in a time when true leaders are increasingly being attacked. In particular, there are two essential marks of leadership that are currently being tested.
The first is the ability to engage in and encourage respectful dialogue and debate. We seem to be in a downward spiral of disrespectful partisanship. “Shouters” are dominating some of the town hall meetings about health care reform, and are almost universally dominating media coverage of the issue.
When did it become acceptable to “shout each other down” in a public forum? When did the taboo get lifted about calling someone a Nazi or comparing someone to Hitler? By doing this in “polite society” aren’t we giving these symbols of ultimate evil more legitimacy than they deserve?
We need leaders who are able to rise above the noise to foster debate and engage opposing viewpoints. We need to get back to the day when people can disagree with each other politically, and still go out for a friendly drink when the debate is over. That’s how Paul Wellstone did it. That’s how Ted Kennedy did it. That’s how our leaders need to do it now.
A second crucial element of leadership is to be able to keep an eye on the True North that is the “common good.” It’s easy to get your bearings confused when you are being hit hard from the left and the right while you’re trying to move forward. The common good should be a guiding light for any great leader. It is defined by your moral center, the philosophy that brought you to a leadership position to begin with. All decisions should lead toward that central place.
Emotion can be the enemy of the common good. How many times have you heard people who are outraged about paying taxes for schools when they don’t have kids in the public school system? This is when we stray from a focus on the common good.
Right now we’re seeing video from town hall meetings of people literally screaming about keeping the government out of health care. Their praise of private health insurance is compelling, but anyone who has dealt with a serious illness can tell you just as emotionally how tenuous that relationship with private insurance can really be. Our leaders need to make changes now, so that those “shouters” will never need to know how quickly they could have found themselves without insurance and without options.
The ability to listen respectfully, process information and then decide on a course of action that will benefit the common good is unique among great leaders. That brings me back to Target Field.
I was one of the volunteers (and a minor player to say the least) who worked to communicate the benefits of the new ballpark when the political tide was moving the opposite direction. At the height of the debate I witnessed a town hall meeting that in some ways foreshadowed the health care town halls we see today.
“Let the billionaires buy their own ballpark!” was one popular slogan.
“How can we fund a baseball field instead of schools?” was another. (I never saw it as an “either/or” question.)
But in the middle of the emotional appeals, I saw that trait that has always helped Minnesota move forward. I saw leadership.
Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis, and a small group of dedicated leaders kept pushing for more debate, more discussion, and finally a solution. Next year we will see the fruits of their hard work.
On opening day I hope the vocal opponents of the ballpark will come out and see that it’s not a gift to the Pohlad family, but is an asset that our entire state should be proud of. I hope those leaders who kept pushing for the stadium are sitting behind home plate for the first pitch, enjoying a dog and a beer. Oh, and I hope Joe Mauer puts one into the cheap seats.
Thoughts that place baseball in the context of common good will always get my attention. Nice job Brian! I’m normally a conservative thinker but always nuance minded (I try) , and my idiologically tight friends have always been mysified by my desire for public support of stadiums, theatres, companies, and other public venues.
Leaders do shape our greater good (good schools and public venues), and sometimes our greater bad (failing infrastructure). It’s the greater good efforts that seem to take the true will of a leader – the ability to face the negative music from both foes and fans. It was sad to watch the last legislative session produce no meaningful plan from the legislative majority and then our Governor punt the problem forward. No collective leadership emerged so we’ll wait and remain disenchanted. I fear the same for health care.
In Target Field, it’s great to see and celebrate a visible measure of leadership and to soon watch fans and detractors of the field take their seats next year. It gives me hope and resolve to raise the same expectations on the even more difficult challenges ahead.
Brian,
Well said. Target Field is a Common Good that will be shared by members of our region for years to come. Also, your homerun call is excellent. During the ticket selection process, I was able to get some seats in the left field bleachers (a common landing spot for Mauer homeruns). As an interesting comparison, these seats I selected are less expensive in Target Field than they were in the Metrodome.
Where do we have the necessary conversations and dialog to move away from polarizing activities and more toward nuanced understanding and solutions that work for all? In our media-blitzed world, discourse and dialog based on fact, argument and listening are becoming lost. Unfortunately the “shouters” and “haters” sell television and advertising. Rationale debate doesn’t.
Oops! In my previous comment, I meant to refer to Representative Tim WALZ — not former Representative Tim Penny.
Nice job Brian! My only comment is that I think you’re being too generous toward the “shouters” who are showing up at the town hall meetings on health care reform. Their behavior is profoundly anti-democratic. They are not only telling the nation and the world what public policies they oppose but they don’t want anyone else to hear information that could help people make up their mind one way or the other. I saw an example of this on August 4 at Farmfest in Redwood Falls. I watched and listened as a “shouter” stood up to denounce Representative Tim Penny for supporting health care reform. She asked the congressman several questions which Rep. Walz then went on to answer. But apparently she was never really interested in an answer to her questions as she got up and left.
Beyond the “shouters” is another category of people that I call the “haters.” They exhibit an almost pathological hatred of any point of view with which they disagree and hatred of any elected official, especially President Obama, who may have a different point of view. Some have even gone so far as to express their hope that the President or other elected officials be killed. The process of making public policy is not the exclusive privilege of any political leader, political party or group of people who have passion for any issue. The process belongs to all of us as Americans. It is our birthright to express ourselves, to agree, to disagree, but above all, to be free.
Good point!