‘The Washington Monthly’: National Service

President Bush’s far-reaching but unrealized national-service program — as well as a proposal to institute a civilian-service draft — are the subjects of a package of cover stories in The Washington Monthly (March).

The lead article, “What Ever Happened to National Service?” chronicles how USA Freedom Corps, Mr. Bush’s popular plan to expand national service by recruiting every American to volunteer 4,000 hours during their lifetime, has “died quietly” despite being proposed at what appeared to be the perfect moment in time — the patriotic aftermath of the events of September 11.

One reason a national-service plan has floundered, writes Richard Just, editor of The American Prospect Online, is that national service is one of those peculiar Washington issues that enjoy broad support but have few vocal advocates. It is also an issue in which 90 percent of the political gain is found in the “pomp and procedure” of announcing one’s support for it, he writes.

Perhaps for that reason, he says, Mr. Bush did not push Congress to appropriate sufficient funds for his proposed civilian-service program. “If Bush still believes, as he put it in his last State of the Union address, that ‘through the gathering momentum of millions of acts of service we can overcome evil with greater good,’”Mr. Just writes, “he will have to stand up and show it.”

One way Mr. Bush could show he is serious about civilian service, writes Paul Glastris, editor of The Washington Monthly, in a second article in the cover package, would be by bringing back the draft — but with a 21st-century twist. Instead of forcing 18-year-old Americans to enlist in the military, give them a choice between civilian or military service.

Reinstituting a draft, Mr. Glastris says, would funnel about a million young people a year into service, and would offer them something all Americans demand: choice.

Most draftees, Mr. Glastris argues, would choose to fulfill their obligation in an array of national-service programs, such as tutoring needy children, building low-cost housing, or cleaning up after natural disasters. Those Americans who chose to serve in the military, Mr. Glastris says, would provide the military with smart, college-quality recruits.

President Bush, Mr. Glastris writes, has done “far more pandering than challenging” in his efforts to expand civilian volunteer service. A “draft to fit the times,” Mr. Glastris says, should strengthen the growing bipartisan national-service movement by providing young people the option of serving their country in a civilian capacity through programs like AmeriCorps.

A “cadre of committed politicians,” Mr. Glastris says, could well make such a draft the “sleeper issue of 2004.”

The articles are available at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com.