Madame President

While most of us were taking a holiday yesterday, Molly Kinder, who previously worked as a program coordinator at CGD on Millions Saved, and is now a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, sent the following reflections on Presidents' Day.Yesterday the United States celebrated Presidents' Day, a holiday which rarely gives reason to pause, beyond perhaps the gratitude for a long weekend. This year, however, I did a double take. The image that Presidents' Day has long evoked in my head -- George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan -- has recently undergone a makeover and now has a striking new feature: her gender.The evidence is everywhere. Harvard's campus is currently abuzz over the recent appointment of the university's first ever female president, Drew Gilpin Faust. Just last week CGD welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, at an event hosted by the Center's own impressive female president, Nancy Birdsall. The darling of the international community, President Sirleaf is one of the few shining stars of good governance amidst a sea of corruption in the African continent, and has given her war ravaged country the single greatest reason for hope in more than thirty years. Last month I traveled to Chile and Bolivia, two countries that have recently celebrated the election of their first female and indigenous presidents, respectively. And closer to home, Democrats are weighing allegiances to either the aspiring first female president of the U.S. or the aspiring first African American president of the U.S. Not bad for a title long synonymous with graying Caucasian males.On one hand, the ascent of so many talented women to presidential posts reflects an emerging openness to women (and minorities) that should rightly be heralded as a watershed shift in societal attitudes. But perhaps more importantly, that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Drew Gilpin Faust were chosen to lead war ravaged Liberia and unwieldy Harvard University reveals a far more salient reality: that women make damn good leaders and, importantly, different leaders. The fundamental contrast between Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, and the contrast in style between Drew Gilpin Faust and Larry Summers -- these are both evidence enough of this fact. Consensus building, accomplished, competent, pioneering and principled. (And, notably, all are mothers). Now that's a style of leadership that the developing world -- and my own country -- would do well from.