The need is dire to run toward the dumpster fire that is politics, put it out, and rebuild a new and improved version of democracy.

The scope and depth of public policy is in a league of its own. It impacts the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people. Politics—both campaigns and governing— improves your family’s financial situation and education level. It can provide physical security and safety. It can expand, or retract, your freedom. It can bring justice and accountability.

It’s really easy to complain about politics. It’s quite another to go out and actually make a tangible impact and change the thing you don’t like.

Unlike business or medicine, you don’t need an advanced degree to enter politics. In normal times, I might argue there should be, given the stakes, responsibility, and the high-pressure of governing. Too many elected officials are, candidly, dumb as dirt. 

But we’re not in normal times. Erecting new barriers of increased education doesn’t make sense. Many more smart, pro-democracy leaders from both parties, in their forties, fifties, and sixties should enter politics, defined broadly to include policy advocacy inside nonprofits, civic entrepreneurship, lobbying, media, ad makers, finance, and, yes, running for office or applying for government jobs.

Certainly, you can and should consider running for office in your community or state level. But the job or career opportunities are more plentiful outside of elected office and are more suitable to many personality types.

The field of politics is much bigger than bright, flashy campaigns we see every two and four years. Take policy entrepreneurs. They chart new ground with a whole lot of persistence, a group of people behind them, and maybe some money. They offer a fix to something they see as a social, civic, or political problem and not rely on the “powers that be” to take action. They don’t accept the status quo.

Look at Terrence Wise, a McDonald’s worker. He sparked the nationwide fight for a $15 minimum wage that has caught fire in several states. In 2019 congressional testimony, he said,

“I work for McDonald's, the second largest employer in America, and I still rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Like other working people in America fighting for $15 and a union, I want to stand on my own. I want to provide my girls with three meals a day and give them the opportunities I didn't have. This movement has changed our entire country. Many people didn't believe $15 an hour was possible, but it has become a reality for 22 million workers across the country.” 

Billionaires aren’t en vogue at the moment. But Mark Cuban, a former owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank entrepreneur, showed similar grit. Say what you will about the guy, but he went out and started a business to sell expensive prescription drugs at a much lower cost. Sure, his online pharmacy is a company that makes money. But he’s also solving a decades-long financial and public policy problem: the exorbitantly high cost of prescription drugs. Two goals can happen at the same time. 

A third example: the Black Pearl bookstore in Austin. The state of Texas has banned something like 800 books because the MAGA crowd in the legislature doesn’t like the texts’ racial or gay-themed, use of profanity, or sexual suggestions. Yet Eric and Katrina Brooks decided to open a Black-owned bookstore that sold banned books. They understood the power of reading and critical thinking. 

Wise, Cuban, Brooks— and many other champions in our history, from Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and hearing impaired students at Gallaudet University—didn’t get consumed by complacency and instead went out to solve the problem themselves.