“I think you’re going to see more young people running for office for the first time in these next elections than ran for the first time inspired by President Obama’s success. … In my experience on the presidential stage — a tour that was shorter than I would have hoped — it seemed that anger and fear were the animating emotions of the entire election.

“I thought as a people we would get through that in our deliberations of the course ahead and who should lead us, but we never really seemed to get through it. And now , for those of us who feel that our government actually can work, and we can govern ourselves and give our children and grandchildren life in greater abundance and prosperity, I think that ‘frustration’ is probably the right word. But all of life is about the ability to transform our grief. Either loss and grief will crush us, or we will transform it into something more life-giving.”

Professor Martin O’Malley is the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Visiting Professor at Boston College Law School for the spring 2017 semester. His course, Leadership and Data Driven Government, emphasizes a new way of governing through performance management — a “show-don’t-tell” methodology that uses open data and maps to draw people to problems the government is addressing. Prior to his tenure at BC Law, Professor O’Malley served as the governor of Maryland, the mayor of Baltimore, and was a Democratic candidate for the 2016 Presidential Election.