Amanda Litman was tired, burned-out. She had spent years racing from one political campaign to another, always on, never getting to be a real person outside of work. “For those of you not in the political sector, campaigns are wild,” she writes in her new book, When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership. “There is no work-life balance because you have no time for life outside of work; there is similarly no time for management training or thoughtful leadership development.”
Litman worked as an email writer for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and later as the email director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, before cofounding her liberal PAC, Run for Something. The organization recruits and supports young people running for local office, aiming to lower the barriers to an “industry known for burning people out hard and fast.” Now in her 30s, Litman is married and has two children, a two-and-a-half-year-old and a seven-month-old, a life that seems night and day from her mid-20s schlep through long-haul campaigns, one where she feels a responsibility to lead with compassion and redefine the workplace.
I spoke with Litman prior to Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis, but as Democrats were confronting reports of damning new revelations about his decline, amid an ongoing intergenerational struggle within in the party. As Democrats still tend to encourage deference to veteran leaders, progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have bucked the establishment and are bringing enthusiasm and life to the party in Donald Trump’s second term.
Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Vanity Fair: You dub this book a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders. As a founder of Run for Something, I know this was important for you. How do you see the next generation of political leaders using this manual?
Amanda Litman: For political leaders, in particular, especially at this moment, thinking about how to be authentic in a way that still maintains boundaries is going to be really important. Thinking about how to do things differently—how to run a campaign but also how to rethink the role of government in people’s lives. We have a unique moment where, sadly, everything is being destroyed, and we get to rebuild it. Refusing to let the way things happened yesterday dictate the way they have to look tomorrow is a really exciting opportunity.
You mentioned early in the book that you were exhausted from political campaigns and wanted to build something sustainable. Can you talk about campaign culture? How could political campaigns be better led?
Political campaigns are unique creatures; they are small businesses meant to shut down the day after Election Day or shortly after Election Day. And they have a really strict, time-boxed nature to them. You don’t get more time to do the work. Campaigns are around the clock from when you wake up until you eventually go to sleep. In 2016, I did not go to the grocery store in-person for the first five months of the year until the primary was really over. It was not unusual to be answering emails starting at 7 a.m. or 6 a.m. and to leave the office after 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. We were in the office six days a week, ultimately seven by the end. I don’t think that’s good. I understand why that’s the case on a campaign, and I think that there are few industries or workplaces where that should be the norm. And there’s basically no other political operation where that has to be the case.
Maybe some of it was fun, but no one was doing their best work between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight. We just weren’t. Being really clear-eyed, we didn’t have to do it that way. What would it have looked like if we had done it differently? How would we have staffed it differently? How would you have run processes differently? There are many constraints of reality around this, but it’s necessary to refuse to accept that it’s a good thing. It’s what next-gen leadership is: refusing to accept the way we did something.
“Bad boomer bosses” are one of the biggest antagonists in your book. And I can’t help but think of the intergenerational divide happening in the Democratic Party. Do you also see those characteristics you mention in politics?
Totally. And I don’t think they’re all bad people. But I think there is a certain mindset that is stuck in the moment they became political adults. You know, it shows up in communication tactics, how they treat staff or constituents, and how they understand the opponent, especially among older Democrats. This is not the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, or John McCain. It’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and that’s a very different opponent. There are certainly some boomers who have risen to the occasion. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the leaders who are able to step forward in this moment are younger, people who became political leaders in the last eight or nine years.
