The Los Angeles Times caught some heat last week when it proposed in an editorial that U2 lead singer Bono be nominated to head the World Bank. The suggestion brought predictable praise from fans and predictable criticism from sober-minded World Bank watchers.

But perhaps it is time for these critics to think beyond the pinstripe suit. Because while Bono is probably not the best man to head the World Bank – he is nobody’s idea of a banker, and his day job as the front man for the world’s greatest rock band is about to bring him on extended tour in support of their new album, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” – the idea, at its heart, is not as stupid as it may first sound.

Over the past decade, Bono has steadily built up credibility on the issues of forgiving Third World debt, alleviating extreme poverty in Africa, and funding the global fight against AIDS. He is not shy about using the currency of his celebrity to advance these ideas and he has an uncommon talent for bringing people together. While domestic politics in the world’s sole superpower is deeply polarized, Bono may be one of the few people to be on friendly speaking terms with both President Bush and President Clinton, Senator Helms and Senator Kennedy – all of whom he has successfully lobbied for multimillion dollars of support.

Bono is unique in the rock pantheon in that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Previous rock icons from Chuck Berry to Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page have not exactly aimed for a life that would get them on the short list. Despite Richard Nixon making Elvis an honorary Drug Enforcement Agent and Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Award to Michael Jackson for “the outstanding example you have set for the youth of America,” civic leadership and pop-stardom have rarely coexisted easily.

But Bono has always approached the rock star game in a very different way than those who came before him. In a music whose conventions encourage authors to write predominantly about sex and drugs, Bono subverts and expands the genre, writing instead about God in thinly veiled forms: joy, love, doubt, temptation, redemption, and transcendence.

Bono wears his heart on his sleeve and as such he is open to criticism that he is sanctimonious and self-righteous. He understands these criticisms well and tries to preemptively puncture them. Giving the 2001 commencement address at Harvard University, he said “in my view the only thing worse than a rock star, is a rock star with a conscience, a celebrity with a cause,” then took aim at his ego by saying “when you need 20,000 people screaming your name in order to feel good about your day, you know you’re a singer.” But Bono went on to say that “Rock music to me is rebel music. But rebelling against what? In the ’50s it was sexual morals and double standards. In the ’60s it was the Vietnam War and racial and social inequality. What are we rebelling against now?” he asked. “I am rebelling against my own indifference. I am rebelling against the idea that the world is the way the world is and there is not a damn thing I can do about it. So, I am trying to do some damn thing.”

In that pursuit, he reached beyond his native Ireland and even his second home of America, to Africa. He convinced the then-Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, to tour the continent with him, studied with professors like Jeffrey Sachs, and used his rock-star millions to help found the organization DATA – Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa. The man puts his money where his mouth is. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, he participated in a panel with President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair President Mbeki of South Africa, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, arguing that the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for Africa, treating preventable disease and ending what he termed “stupid poverty,” was in the long-term best interests of America and Europe.

Raging against the machine is a much better pose for a rock star’s resume, but Bono prefers to be a voice for the outside on the inside. He uses his celebrity to get attention for issues that would normally never make it past the pop-culture filter. He reaches his audience using humor, reason, and moral outrage, reminding people that “Isn’t ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ in the global village so inconvenient?”

The value in this side-dish of a debate is not whether Bono should actually become head of the World Bank. Ironically, that would only constrict his ability to reach people. It is about what kind of individuals ought to be considered for positions of global leadership and responsibility. Conventional choices provide conventional answers, and our common problems require creative solutions. As a result, we need examples of people who reach beyond the limits of conventional labels with the courage of their convictions.

Figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and for that matter Ronald Reagan, were able to use their celluloid celebrity to get people to focus on often overlooked but still important civic issues and then lead effectively. Likewise, a lyric like “where you live/ should not decide/ whether you live/or whether you die” from U2’s new album, describes the moral challenges confronting an organization like the World Bank at least as memorably as the best doctoral dissertation. Because he challenges himself, Bono challenges the rest of us. And if he appears inspirational to some in my generation, it is because of the illuminating power of his idealism.