Watching Barack Obama’s powerful acceptance speech last night, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to have someone like that at the helm of NASA.
After all, last fall in Manchester, New Hampshire Obama did send out a call to all Americans, "Make this campaign a vehicle for your thoughts and dreams."
Indeed, at the end of the day, it will not be one man in the White House that will alter the course of history, it will be the millions called forth by his passion and his conviction to commit to their dreams that will leave an indelible mark.
I asked myself, what would happen if the NASA Administrator delivered that same speech (albeit slightly edited for a different audience) to NASA? Would it rouse people to fulfill on our dreams of space?
What if the Administrator of NASA gathered the Agency together and said, "This is not about me, this is about you"? What if the NASA Administrator said, "NASA, we are better than these last 20 years. We are a better Agency than this"? What if the Administrator said, "NASA, now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to create an Agency that utilizes every one of its employees to their fullest, because it will take nothing less to get us exploring again and truly inspiring the world with what is possible."
Imagine him going on as Obama did:
"I will invest in early career development, I will recruit the best and brightest and pay them higher salaries, I will give our engineers more support and listen to their technical input so that they know they are heard and that their input is valued. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.
"I will go through the NASA budget line by line, eliminating items that no longer work and making the things we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.
"And NASA, NASA, we must also admit that fulfilling NASA’s promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover the NASA that John F. Kennedy set out in 1962.
"Yes, the Agency must provide ladders to success for young and mid-career engineers and managers that are disempowered and downtrodden. But we must also admit that programs alone can’t replace community, that the Agency can’t back up an employee at a meeting or be there to listen after a tough day, that friends must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to each other.
"Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility, that’s the essence of NASA’s promise. And just as we keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep NASA’s promise abroad to our international partners.
"NASA, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices. And all of us will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past 20 years can’t be measured in lives lost, cant be measured in Gallup polls. What has been lost is our sense of a common purpose and that’s what we have to restore.
"We may not agree on Moon or Mars, but surely we can agree that we must challenge and push ourselves to the greatest of our abilities in the service of humankind.
"The reality of Ares I development may be very different for engineers in Utah than to those plagued with oscillation vibration problems at Marshall, but don’t tell me we can’t find a way to send explorers out into the solar system that is robust and reliable.
"I know there are differences on balancing science and exploration, but surely we can all agree that science has brought us some of the most important missions of our day like Hubble, Cassini and Phoenix and created a place for students to get involved in our missions and that exploration can be a vehicle for inspiring the next generation to study math and science and give us hope.
"But this, too, is part of NASA’s promise, the promise of an Agency where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.
"I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer, and more honest in our Agency is not possible. And that is to be expected, because when you don’t have any fresh ideas you use stale tactics to scare employees, you make a big mission about small things.
"And you know what? It’s worked before, because it feeds on the cynicism we all have about life. When headquarters doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it’s best to stop hoping and settle for what you already know.
"I get it. But I stand before you today because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this hope has never been about me; it’s been about you.
"For so many long years, you have stood up, one by one, and said, ‘Enough,’ to the politics of the past. You understand that this time around, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same old players and expect a different result.
"You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Headquarters. Change comes to Headquarters. Change happens because the people of the Agency rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new Agency for a new time.
"NASA, this is one of those moments.
"I believe that, as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming, because I’ve seen it, because I’ve lived it.
"I have seen it at JPL, when they pulled themselves up after failure to build Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix.
"I have seen it in OpenNASA.com, where employees are taking responsibility for their Agency and working to make space a part of the public’s lives.
"I have seen it in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, where people are not settling for business as usual.
"I see if in the people who have moved across the country just for the opportunity to work on sending humans out beyond low Earth orbit again.
"I have seen it post-Columbia, when people were pulling together to work long hours, and even a NASA Administrator got overridden when an engineer raised a safety concern.
"You know, this Agency of ours has a larger budget then any other country’s space Agency, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful human launch system in the world, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our missions and our research are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the students beating a trail to our door.
"Instead, it is that NASA spirit, that NASA promise, that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.
"Every day I am reminded that I am not a perfect man, and I will not be a perfect Administrator, but I I can promise you this, I will always tell you what I think and where I stand, I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face, I will listen to you when we disagree and most importantly I will open the doors to participation in this Agency and ask you to take the reins of your space program again.
"I know what I am asking is hard, I know that management and politics have disappointed you so many times before that sometimes it seems easier just to tune out and walk away, but what you have to remember is that when you walk away the same old politics wins every time, that is what the people who benefit from the same old politics are counting on, you walking away, you tuning out, you deciding things can’t change. That is why I need you, that is why I can’t do this alone.
"I am not just asking you to trust in my ability to change NASA, I am asking you to trust in yourselves, in your own instincts, in your own sense of possibility, your own sense of what is right. I am asking you to bet on all of us together to do what many of us have dreamed of since we were children, to lift our sights, to join together to forge a space faring future for humanity.
"Make this space program a vehicle for your hopes and your dreams and if you are willing to work for it and fight for it if you are willing to go into the trenches and to invite your colleagues to join us, then I believe that this time will finally be different from all of the rest and we can finally create a NASA beyond the petty politics of the past, we can finally create the NASA of our dreams."
The video they used to introduce Barack also included Apollo footage of a crew splashing down near Hawaii as Obama told the story of how he sat on his grandfather’s shoulders waving his American flag as they greeting the astronauts home.
He recalled his grandfather saying, "Americans, we can do anything when we put our minds to it."
Image Courtesy Democratic National Convention
