Profiles in Courage

She smiles with embarassment, but she can't help it--she has to pull that Carter-Mondale leaflet out of the trash as she walks by. "Politics is a passion of mine," Lisa A. Rotenberg '81, says as she hands the leaflet to a woman. "I love campaigns. I love politics. I love being in the hub of things--it's either in your blood or it's not."

Rotenberg began her political career at age 10, licking stamps for local campaigns. She worked in '68 for Humphrey, in '72 for McGovern, in '76 for Carter. Now she is Massachusetts college coordinator for the President, one of the highest-ranking Harvard politicos in campaign '80.

"I don't know what to tell my friends--nobody likes politicians these days, but I think campaigning is the greatest," Rotenberg explains. "My parents always wanted me to be a doctor, and sometimes they teased me about politics, but they're proud of me now."

Having come up through the ranks in the oldest of political traditions. Rotenberg looks back fondly on her earliest campaign memories--carloads of kids handing out leaflets and then going to McDonald's to claim cheeseburgers and milkshakes as their reward.

What Rotenberg really likes about politics is barn-storming and canvassing, what she calls "the sexy parts" of the process. "It's getting out and talking to the people."

Talking to people is what got Rotenberg her position as college coordinator--and responsibility for 54 Commonwealth campuses. She was discovered at the start of the fall term in the crowd of pre-law and pre-political students who flocked to Government 154, "The American Presidency." A Carter campaigner who remembered her as an intern in the Vice President's office two years ago asked Rotenberg is she wanted to take charge of the President's effort at Harvard. At first she was uncertain, but when Rotenberg arrived at Carter headquarters in Boston, she ran into another co-worker, this one dating from a later internship in the White House Appointments Office. One afternoon and three instant promotions later, Lisa Rotenberg found herself running the Commonwealth's student campaign.

Although she supported Kennedy in the primary, Rotenberg did not hit the stump for him because, as she says, she did not want to alienate her White House contacts. "I've always been a Kennedy person and a flaming liberal," she explains, "but I didn't think he'd win, so I held out to see what would happen."

"I don't consider myself a sleazy politico," she says. "There's no spoils system. I won't get anything out of this except for experience. I'm doing it because Carter is the best man."

Working for "the best man" has forced Rotenberg to cut down her class schedule. She has taken a reduced course load, including an independent study project on the election process. When she leaves Harvard in June, she says she may work for a campaign consulting firm or the State Department. Eventually, however, she's headed for politics.

"I'm good at politics because I like people and I have a good rapport with people," she believes. But campaigning has taught Lisa Rotengerg how to be pragmatic. As she observes, "I don't think you can make it in politics if you're not pragmatic."