Where Are They Now?

By JAMES COLLINS

So where have they led us, yesterday's leaders of tomorrow? In the summer of 1974, shortly before Richard Nixon became the first President ever to resign, TIME, perceiving a crisis of leadership in America, presented its "Faces for the Future," 200 men and women, age 45 and under, who could "assume leadership roles in the right circumstances -- and given the right spirit of the country." Five years later, TIME chose a new portfolio of "faces for the future" -- 50 more people in the same age category whom the editors identified as emerging leaders. Without seeming immodest, we may observe that we accurately predicted great futures for many of the individuals on our lists. We made some missteps, of course -- Marion Barry comes to mind -- and we did fail to notice some of those who were in their pupal leadership stage -- Newt Gingrich, say -- but the fact remains that we did pretty well. Nevertheless, we do find one question just slightly troubling: If the future leaders we chose were so great, how come we're still searching for leaders? William J. Clinton, as he was formally identified by TIME, made our leadership list in 1979 -- he was 32 years old and the country's youngest Governor. However honored he may have been at the time, today he might not be particularly pleased by the example we provided to illustrate his ability to take courageous action and make others follow: "Instead of cutting taxes like everyone else," we wrote, "Democrat Clinton persuaded the assembly to raise them by $47 million."

We also put former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas on that '79 list, and if things had gone differently in 1992, he might have been the first person we would be mentioning here, relegating William J. Clinton to a passing reference as the Arkansas Governor who finished second in the New Hampshire primary. What did we think was important to tell readers about Tsongas 15 years ago? For one thing, that he "has strongly supported the Kennedy-Waxman national health-care plan." After the events of this past year, "the Kennedy-Waxman national health-care plan" has such a quaint ring to it.

None of the leaders on the 1974 list has become President as yet -- but that's not for lack of trying. Twenty years ago, who would have imagined that H. Ross Perot, then a 44-year-old founder of a computer-software company, would win 19% of the vote as a third-party candidate in the 1992 election? George Bush-nemesis Pat Buchanan, a 35-year-old Nixon aide, made the 1974 list, as did presidential aspirants Jack Kemp, then 38 and a two-term Congressman, and Joseph Biden, at 31, the Senate's youngest member. As for perennial presidential almost-aspirant William Bradley, who in '74 was 30 years old and still a Knick, we wrote that he "was laying the groundwork for a possible congressional bid in his New Jersey district with public speaking between games and in the off-season." If public speaking was his strategy, it's remarkable that Bradley had any political career at all.

Remember that Kennedy-Waxman national health-care plan? In 1974 we said one of its sponsors could "practically write his own ticket -- including a presidential one." Edward M. Kennedy was 42 back then, and we wrote that "Teddy's recent trip to the Soviet Union and Western Europe, plus his well-publicized sponsorship of health care legislation and an income tax cut, may be the opening shots in a bid for the White House." That bid actually came in 1980 -- and went.

It almost seems as if everyone on the 1974 list has run for President at one time or another. Jerry Brown made the roster, and his presidential bids came in 1976 and 1980 and again in 1992. Former Governor of Florida Reuben Askew ran in 1984, and Lamar Alexander, Secretary of Education in the Bush Administration, looks like he's trying for the 1996 G.O.P. nomination. Pete du Pont, the ex-Governor of Delaware, challenged Bush in the primaries in 1988, as did Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense; and Congresswoman Pat Schroeder was an undeclared candidate in 1988. Given this pattern of presidential ambition among the '74 selectees, we should not be surprised if Robert Gottlieb, the former editor of the New Yorker, or Saul Steinberg, the onetime greenmail virtuoso, begins showing up at lunch counters in New Hampshire next year, chatting with the citizenry.

There is more to leadership than dropping out of the primaries just after Super Tuesday, however. Marian Wright Edelman, mentor of Hillary, then and now director of the Children's Defense Fund, was named in 1974. So was Dan Rather, coming off an excellent season of confrontational Watergate-related press conferences with President Nixon; Rather replaced Walter Cronkite as the anchor for the CBS Evening News in 1981 and has remained in the job, solo or accompanied, ever since. Another television journalist, Barbara Walters, then 43, also made the 1974 list. TIME called her "TV's first lady of talk," and if she has ceded that title to Oprah Winfrey, she remains an institution -- TV's first first lady of talk. Jann Wenner's name appears two places below Walters'; the 28-year old founder of Rolling Stone was then known to his staff as "Citizen Wenner," we reported. That year his publishing interests grossed $6 million; for 1993 the figure was more than $100 million. When another magazine editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., was chosen in 1979, he was 35 and ran an irreverent, relatively obscure, right-wing monthly called the American Spectator; now, with a rich subject like Bill Clinton to sustain it, the American Spectator's circulation has grown to 10 times what it was in 1979, and conservatives treat its editor as if he were Rush Limbaugh crossed with George Bernard Shaw.

Unfortunately, for some of those identified as future leaders, things have not gone so smoothly. Gary Hart was listed in 1979, and we quoted this comment Barry Goldwater made about him: "You can disagree with him politically, but I have never met a man who is more honest or more moral." Another '79 alumnus was Marion Barry, whom we quoted thusly: "I think integrity is the most important quality for a leader." At the time, Barry was the mayor of Washington. Forced out in 1990, he has just been returned to office, which suggests a new definition of leadership: it is the ability to inspire, to command and to get re-elected even though you have been videotaped smoking crack in a Washington hotel room with a woman not your wife.

Peter MacDonald, former chief of the Navajo Nation, could be found on the 1974 list; now he can be found in a federal prison in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where he is serving 14 years for charges relating to bribes and kickbacks. When Harold Greenwood was chosen as a future leader in 1974, he was president of something called the Midwest Federal Savings & Loan in Minneapolis. Had we known then what we know now about S&Ls, we might have been able to guess that in 1991 he would be convicted of fraud. Molecular biologist David Baltimore was 36 when TIME selected him for the 1974 list; the following year he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, and in 1990 he became president of Rockefeller University, an ultra-prestigious research institution. But 18 months later, he resigned as a result of a scandal over data falsified by one of his researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert Sanchez, the Archbishop of Sante Fe, made our 1974 list. He was accused of having sex with several women and resigned in 1993. Of all the 250 former future leaders, however, Richard Ravitch may have achieved the greatest ignominy. He appeared on the 1974 list on account of his work as president of his family's construction firm and his civic activities. Today he is the chief negotiator for the major league baseball owners.

Yet it is not the future leaders who ended up disgraced that cause concern; it is the leaders who were successes. TIME was prescient to identify Les Aspin in 1974 as someone who might go far. Back then he was simply a two-term Congressman with an interest in military affairs, yet he rose all the way to Secretary of Defense. How well did that turn out? Clinton, Rather, Biden, Senator Sam Nunn, columnist George Will, California Governor and possible Republican presidential nominee Pete Wilson, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Citibank CEO John Reed -- all were on the lists of potential leaders, and all could be said to have realized their potential. Even so, the leadership vacuum remains. We have the leaders we wanted. Now what?

(Oh, and as for J. Stanley Pottinger: in 1974 he was a Nixon Administration lawyer. He eventually retired from public service and worked in investment banking and real estate, suffering occasionally from the vicissitudes of the marketplace. His first novel, The Fourth Procedure -- a thriller -- will be published in April.) He has no plans to seek national office at this time.