Political Courage

I've been thinking about my last post and how elected leaders tend to wait until the majority of people agree with them. In other words they don't lead, they follow. It's always been that way, even George Washington seemed to understand that slavery was bad, but the votes weren't with him. Even Abraham Lincoln's first move as president was to propose a constitutional amendment which would allow slavery forever (look it up!). It wasn't until the Civil War had erupted and the majority of the voters recognized the evil of slavery. In race relations presidents like the Roosevelt's made small gestures to today's views but they lacked the majority support to make any major policy changes. Gay civil rights are in roughly the same phase right now. I would wager that most politicians recognize the inherent inequality in treating some people differently. When the majority of voters let them, I'm sure they will be happy to come out in favor of it. There are a number of libertarian ideas which also fit into that boat. The drug war against marijuana, for instance, makes no intellectual or economic sense. But the majority of voters seem to be for it, therefore the politicians refuse to make waves. It makes me wonder, how would people react to a leader who actually took the lead on an issue? What do you think?