I remember in history class, must have been a junior.

He was during the impeachment process of President Clinton or all the scandal, everything

that was going on.

And I remember the teacher was just kind of riffing on this and he said, you know, would anybody

here ever want to be president or want to run for office, seeing what a mess and what an

ugly place Washington was?

And I just maybe involuntarily my hand went up.

And from then on, it became the running joke of the class that I'd wind up running

for president.

And then by the time I got to college, I had this institute of politics at Harvard and

every day there'd be a different speaker who would come through.

I remember when I was there as a freshman, people like Donna Brazil, who had just come

off managing the Gore campaign and Rick Davis, who had done the same thing for McCain.

And the former president of Ecuador, he'd been deposed in a coup.

He just kind of hang around and watch him and see what they were like.

The biggest realization was that they're just people.

These people who were shaping the world, people I was seeing on TV were obviously very impressive

people, but they were just people.

I think it changed my awareness of the fact that on some level, I could be part of that

world too.

But in a very simple sense, especially coming from Indiana, it seemed that it was a choice.

You could be in elected office or you could be an out gay person, not both.

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