View From the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape the World

Chapter 4The Essence of LeadershipDriving Productivity, People, and Culture

In 1971, when first-term congressman Paul Sarbanes told a friend that he had decided to join the House Judiciary Committee, his friend was incredulous. It was a boring committee, he told Sarbanes, and he wouldn't see much action there. But just a few years later, Sarbanes stood before Congress and made history as he read the first article of impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

This was only the beginning of Sarbanes' 36 years in Congress—three terms as a congressman and five in the Senate before he retired in 2007. Sarbanes grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland, and he was the first in his family to go to college. “My parents were immigrants from Greece who ran a restaurant,” he told me. “They were determined that their kids were gonna get educated, and that we would go to college. But our horizons for college were all local.” Looking to diversify its admissions pool, Princeton University sent a recruiter to Sarbanes' public high school, and he was encouraged to apply. Sarbanes was accepted, and after Princeton, he went on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship, graduate from Harvard Law School, and work briefly in law before pursuing his greatest passion, politics. In 1966, Sarbanes ran for the Maryland House of Delegates, and from that point on, he never lost a race, going on to defeat two House incumbents, a sitting senator, and two former senators.

I interviewed Sarbanes on Capitol Hill in the office ...