Columns

On Nov. 1, 2011, municipalities across Colorado will conduct elections. Voters in those cities and towns will be picking mayors and members of their city councils. They will decide on tax questions and other issues concerning how their cities will operate.
And then there is Boulder.

Last week, I sat down for coffee with a recent college graduate. The young man, whom I’ll call “K,” worked his way through ROTC, took a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army, and now serves in an Army engineer company.
K is the son of immigrants, a first-generation American. He’s a student of American history, especially the founding era. And he understands as well as anyone I know the principles that animate the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. What’s more, he believes in those principles to the core of his being.

I was recently at an awards ceremony where a local business executive was honored. In describing his philosophy about hiring employees, he noted that his first test is always to find pleasant people. That rang true with me, but I’d never heard anyone say it before.
It made me wonder: Is pleasantness the most underrated human trait?