Compassion shouldn't just be on display when it's politically expedient.
And people who profess a desire to lead should step into the fray, even when they have nothing political to gain.
These lessons are apparent right now as we consider how current and prospective Hoosier leaders are — or more accurately are not — responding to the lead crisis in East Chicago.
Some 1,200 East Chicago residents are in the midst of being relocated from the city's public, low-income West Calumet housing complex because of toxic lead and arsenic levels in the soil.
The EPA and city leaders are working to fund the move, a school has been evacuated and deemed unfit for use and people's daily lives — and possibly long-term health — have been put at risk.
Yet you wouldn't know it on the campaign trails for some of the Hoosier state's highest offices.
This woeful showing of compassion for East Chicago is a true bipartisan effort.
Former and prospective future Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh was all too happy earlier this summer to grip and grin for the cameras with Lake County political allies in Hammond.
We even captured a photo of him embracing disgraced East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick, the subject of one of the most corrupt political reigns in Region history.
But has Bayh rolled up his sleeves and publicly offered help, compassion or understanding for the residents in crisis in East Chicago? Why hasn't a visit to East Chicago's troubled neighborhood been a part of his campaign itinerary?
We were touched this week to see Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, now the Republican nominee for vice president, visiting, embracing and helping downstate Kokomo residents after horrific tornadoes tore through their community.
Equally powerful were images of Pence and his presidential running mate, Donald Trump, passing out supplies in flood-ravaged Louisiana.
But East Chicago is also part of the Hoosier state, and we're talking about a public health crisis displacing more than 1,000 people and an entire elementary school.
What message does it send when a sitting governor will visit a downstate disaster nearer to his power base but not a Northwest Indiana city experiencing its own major crisis?
We haven't seen Democrat John Gregg visiting East Chicago's crisis zone — or GOP gubernatorial contender and sitting Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb, either.
Nor have we seen the GOP's U.S. Senate candidate Todd Young, who faces Bayh in November.
Good leaders don't pick and choose their compassionate responses based on political expediency. They respond, in good times and bad, to their entire constituency because it's the right thing to do.
The East Chicago lead crisis has been unfolding for an entire summer. The shameful bipartisan absence of visits by the state's top current and prospective leaders speaks volumes.