At With Honor, Rye Barcott reflects on the legacy of David Gergen:
Leadership at its best is service to others.
If this were a ranked-order list, this might be the first bullet for David’s advice on leadership, though it is also fitting as the last. Nearly every interaction I have had with David involves the theme of service. After the first election cycle with With Honor, we helped elect or re-elect 19 members of Congress to work across party lines, including Reps. Seth Moulton and Mike Gallagher. What would this group organize around initially across party lines?
David guided us to voluntary national service, and it became one of the three key pillars of the Congressional caucus. Voluntary national service is immensely popular in polling across party lines throughout the nation. Yet fewer than 1% of young Americans now serve in the military, and fewer than 5% serve in civilian capacities or public service jobs such as teachers and nurses.
With David’s encouragement and the support of many in his vast network of friends, we’ve since helped pass laws to expand AmeriCorps and Junior ROTC in high schools across the nation. This will be an enduring focus of commitment for With Honor.
After With Honor’s first gubernatorial candidate was elected, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, David and I flew to Baltimore to see him. “Service will save us,” Governor Moore had proclaimed on the campaign trail. We were thrilled to learn that the very first bill Wes intended to initiate focused on national service. The SERVE Act, since passed into law, created a service year option for Maryland youth.
In 2022, David published his final book. The book’s title is inspired from the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Holmes, who had been left for dead on the battlefields of the Civil War, fought for African American rights and became one of the most consequential Supreme Court justices in U.S. history. Holmes said in a Memorial Day speech to veterans and their families in 1884:
“As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. … Through our great good fortune, in our youth, our hearts were touched with fire. It is given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.”
David’s view on service is best embodied in his own words reflecting on these lines by Holmes. David wrote in his final book, Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders are Made:
“What a glorious way to capture what so many young men and women have experienced in one era after another in committing themselves to civic life, seeking to create a fairer, more just, and more peaceful world. Life will hold perils, but in devoting yourself to the service of others, you find satisfaction that transcends your troubles. As many have discovered, service and leadership are inextricably bound together. Indeed, leadership at its best is service to others.”
Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to David, one of the few who makes it his life’s work to serve our country and his fellow citizens. Service comes in many forms, and many of us who consider David a friend and mentor serve in uniform. But his life shows us that anyone can serve and that service can save us. Our country’s brightest days can still be ahead of us through service to one another. He impresses upon us a lifetime devoted to this cause. And we, all of us who know him, are better people for knowing him. Thank you, David.