I was, and still am, a fan of President Obama. The day after his first election, I stopped for gas at a station in the middle of nowhere. No other businesses around. No traffic.

I was pumping gas, the Obama bumper sticker still on my car—weeks later someone would tear it off in a grocery store parking lot—when a Black woman pulled up behind me and began filling her tank.

“It’s a wonderful day, isn’t it?” she said, smiling. I grinned back. “The best.”

We were two women who seemingly had nothing in common. But on that day we shared a dream of a brighter future with a new leader.

Yesterday I wrote a post about leadership. It was filled with vague references—hints, really—to my admiration for Mr. Obama.

At the risk of alienating some readers, I’ll be more explicit today.

“Korach looked at leadership and saw status. Moses saw leadership as service.”

Today I add this: Trump looks at leadership and sees status. Obama looks at leadership as service.

The new Obama Center in Chicago is more than a presidential library. It is an expression of leadership at its best. It is designed to inspire both hope and action—to help visitors understand their own role in creating a better nation and a better world.

The task of leadership is to inspire people to join in the common work of improving their community. To uplift others. To help individuals see possibilities beyond themselves.

Leadership is not for personal gain. It is not to enrich oneself and one’s family. It is not to etch one’s name in gold.

Yet we are burdened with a leader who does not understand this basic truth, who believes that enlarging himself and diminishing others is leadership.

Bill Clinton often reminded us that he came from a town called Hope. Jimmy Carter said that having “hope for a better future” is a fundamental human right. Barack Obama’s hope poster became a visual symbol of his belief that “Yes We Can.”

This is my hope: that in the absence of leadership from those who govern, “we the people” will seek out new leaders to raise up and support.

We will not always agree with them. Americans are not a monolith. We are more different than we are alike. And yet we long for something better, something brighter, something that calls us toward our higher selves.

As we raise up new leaders, I pray that we will rally behind them, work with them, teach them and guide them, and when necessary, challenge them. Leadership is never a solo act. It is a covenant between leaders and the communities they serve.

Because the Korach within—the ego that power feeds—lurks in every human. The work of a healthy community is not merely to choose its leaders, but to help them remain servants rather than rulers, builders rather than destroyers, and people of hope.