Obama Effect Inspiring Few to Seek Office

Eric Lesser was shaking hands with diners in a Portuguese restaurant last week when he spotted the owner of Manny’s TV & Appliances. “Oh, I’ve got to get a picture,” Mr. Lesser eagerly said, draping his arm over Manny Rovithis, whose low-budget commercials have run for decades in Western Massachusetts. Mr. Lesser’s giddiness about meeting the local celebrity had not faded when he sat down for lunch.

 

“Awesome,” he said.

 

Although Mr. Lesser spent much of the last six years in the company of President Obama and Washington hotshots, now, as an earnest, hug-prone 29-year-old candidate for the Massachusetts State Senate, he is far more interested in people like Mr. Rovithis. Which is a good thing. Mr. Lesser, a former White House staff member, has returned home on the path Mr. Obama hoped to inspire many of his young supporters to follow when he said, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

But if Mr. Lesser, who is on leave from Harvard Law School to run for office, is the face of the promised Obama political generation, he is also one of its few participants. For all the talk about the movement that elected Mr. Obama, the more notable movement of Obama supporters has been away from politics. It appears that few of the young people who voted for him, and even fewer Obama campaign and administration operatives, have decided to run for office. Far more have joined the high-paid consultant ranks.

 

Unlike John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who inspired virtual legislatures of politicians and became generational touchstones, Mr. Obama has so far had little such influence. That is all the more remarkable considering he came to office tapping into spirit of volunteerism and community service that pollsters say is widespread and intense among young people. Mr. Obama has come to represent that spirit, but he has failed, pollsters say, to transform it into meaningful engagement in the political process.

 

“If you were to call it an Obama generation, there was a window,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. “That opportunity has been lost.” He said the youth who came of voting age around the time of the 2008 election have since lost interest in electoral politics, and pointed to a survey he conducted last year among 18- to 29-year-olds. Although 70 percent said they considered community service an honorable endeavor, only 35 percent said the same about running for office.