LEADERSHIP: Tomorrow

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No one can predict whether any of these local leaders will eventually ascend to the national stage or whether that kind of leadership -- on the grand scale ! -- has become impossible. One can only cite the hopeful example of Regina Benjamin, a rural physician whose rather modest original goal was to help solve the local doctor shortage in poverty-stricken Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Practicing there for a while convinced her of the need to know something about business. While earning her M.B.A. at Tulane University, she unearthed an obscure federal rule that would provide government money to qualified rural health clinics. Suddenly, in addition to her medical chores in Bayou La Batre, she was performing a wider-ranging function as an adviser to other small, medically underserved towns looking to open facilities. This, in turn, led her to a seat on the Alabama Medical Association's governing board and the state public-health and medical examiners' boards. She presents this progression toward ever greater responsibility and authority matter-of-factly, as if it were inevitable. Which, perhaps, it is.

As surely as there are forces organic to today's America that stifle leadership, there are forces within some Americans that cause them to lead nonetheless. Ambition plays a role, as does a desire to do good, but doggedness is essential, as is a sort of questing curiosity. Some local heroes will remain local, which is as it should be. For others, solving one problem will inevitably lead to another and another: until, eventually, the new leaders will be ministering not to a neighborhood but to a nation, perhaps to the world. Assuming that we will let them.