Three recent articles in Colorado Politics and the Colorado Springs Gazette help point out that the Centennial State has some very fine elected officials, especially when compared to some other states, to say nothing of our national leadership. 

Thick skins are required in those seeking elective office, a lesson I learned firsthand in my own failed 2008 run for the U.S. Congress. I confess I was startled, as a retired military officer, to have my loyalty to our great nation regularly questioned. I enjoyed discussions about real issues, but I confess I grew weary of being called a commie, when in fact as an ICBM launch officer in the early 1980s, I used to target them. I did have one person go way over the line, when he became enraged that I did not embrace his theory that then-President George W. Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. When he started to leave threatening messages on my home answering machine, I did call the cops. OK, where was I? Oh, yeah, thick skin and good representation…

Happily, we have leaders in Colorado who put their constituents first. The “Bills” as I call former governors Owens and Ritter, are good examples from Colorado’s past. Three current leaders that come to mind quickly in these troubled times are Gov. Jared Polis, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, and 2nd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse.

Polis, in his regular press conferences, has been a model of firm, clear, and evenhanded leadership. But his aplomb and the thickness of his skin was surely tested yesterday when a reporter asked him about criticism of his stay-at-home order that had compared it to Nazism. Polis paused, before responding, “As a Jewish-American who lost family in the Holocaust, I’m offended by any comparison to Nazism,” Polis said. “We have to save lives – the exact opposite of the slaughter of 6 million Jews and many gypsies and Catholics, and gays and lesbians, and Russians and so many others.” Recall, please, how President Trump has repeatedly responded to questions that were the polar opposite of the one Polis had to deal with, and simply asked about what his administration was actually doing. Trump often responds like a petulant child, calling the reporters terrible people and refusing to answer the question. I’m quite glad we have Polis here in Colorado.

Similarly mature in the face of crisis are Senator Bennet and Congressman Neguse. Bennet (bias warning: I worked for him as a staffer for four years) is introducing legislation that would create a commission to develop a plan to reopen the country, when the pandemic is past. Bennet’s plan would include scientists, public health experts, leaders of state and local governments, as well as leaders from various economic, transportation, and national security sectors. In other words, a group of true experts spanning government and the private sector. Now recall please that President Trump recently announced, well, a couple of different “commissions,” so to speak. One of the many problems with the Trump plans was that he apparently hadn’t actually talked to many of the people he named publicly as being on board.

Neguse is also offering legislation to help those most in need. His plan includes paying hazard pay to health care workers on the frontlines of the Covid19 battle. He also supports broadening such pay benefits to all essential workers. I couldn’t agree more, and I remain amazed by the work put in by grocery store workers, Post Office personnel, and more.  I suspect many of you have seen, on various social media platforms, posts asking how those opposed to increasing the minimum wage feel now, as many of those low-pay workers are the ones handing you your bag of groceries or delivering your pizza, so you can stay home, but that’s for another column…

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second and final time. He could not know that he had a bit over one month left to life. On that long-ago day, Lincoln’s thoughts were firmly fixed on the scourge of the Civil War. Yet the final sentence of that remarkable oration can serve as a demonstration of true and unifying leadership, as well as being applicable to our current national crisis.

Lincoln said: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s  wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Those powerful words echo clearly into the 21st century. True leadership can ease our path forward, and Mr. Lincoln’s admonitions, now applied to a war against a virus, offers sage and powerful insights. I’m glad we have Polis, Bennet, and Neguse in these difficult times, and I wish we had a Lincoln instead of a Trump.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.