USA: Two candidates, one national civil service

John McCain and Barack Obama have been framed by the American third sector. Whether it is the Republicans or the Democrats that end up winning the coming national elections, USA’s non profit sector is sure to bring home a historic victory: the establishment of a national civil service that is to be voluntary, paid and ruled by the Voluntary National Service Act that the American Congress is to make into law by September 2009.

This is the promise made by the ServiceNation campaign, a bipartisan campaign for the national civil service movement supported by over 100 non profit organizations representing more than 100 million Americans. The campaign has worked hard behind the scenes, managing to successfully exploit the passion for social issues that all candidates have expressed and ensuring that important issues brought up in the election campaign, like volunteering and altruism, not be left behind in the political arena. Framing them, as it were.

The trap will be set off, officially, during the ServiceNation Summit on September 11 in New York: McCain and Obama have agreed to participate presenting the new America they have in mind. Their presence, however, will be interpreted (and sold to the public) as meaning that not only do they accept but also share the goals of ServiceNation’s campaign, that is to launch a voluntary national civil service programme paid through the AmeriCorps that will increase the number of volunteers from 70 thousand to 1 million by 2020. As well as their support for the ServiceNation’s agenda that masterfully fits in to the election campaign’s final phases.

Click to believe on Bethechangeinc.org: September 12, draft of the Declaration of Service that every American citizen can print and ratify online; September 27 (the day after the first face-to-face between the two presidential candidates), a national day of voluntary service for all States; and so on through to the approval of the Voluntary National Service Act due in September. A law that two people with very different political interests have been working on (secretly) for many months – Democratic party senator Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleague Orrin Hatch. Possible? But there is more: this smart, bipartisan cooperation designed to seduce senators, intellectuals and economists alike is ServiceNation’s first campaigning rule and has enabled them to anticipate McCain and Obama’s agenda.

It all began in September 2007, when Time magazine dedicated its front cover to the need to launch an American civil service for post September 11 America, a society that boast’s the largest number of committed citizens in the country’s history – in 2006 61 million people and a total of 8.1 million of hours were dedicated to those in need – but also one increasingly affected by worrying social emergencies. The weekly magazine was bombarded with letters signed by actors, social innovators, scientists, non profit organizations and normal citizens in favour of a paid civil service. And from Be the Change, a social enterprise with offices in Washington and Massachusetts, came the idea of a cross-party campaign to exploit the coming election. The first step? A simple mathematical equation sent to hundreds of non profit organisations by email: $1 invested in the social generates between $1.50 to $3 in social benefit. Included in the long list of recipients were those in charge of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain’s campaigns. The result? That they turn the national service into an electoral slogan for themselves.

Hillary Clinton promises to open a West Point for social issues, where civil service specialists will be trained. Obama bases his entire campaign, and his extraordinary online fundraising campaign, around the desire that American citizens have to invest 3.5 billion dollars to increase AmeriCorps and PeaseCorps membership and encouraging students and veterans to volunteer. And McCain, one of the few republican senators to have ever defended AmeriCorps (that were wanted by Bill Clinton and risked being getting the axe during George Bush’s first mandate), declares: “Service for people in need has been considered a left wing issue for a long time. It’s a pity: because duty, honour and mother land are values that go beyond ideology; civil service is a way to practice patriotism”.

How not to be fooled

There is the risk that commitment and civil service become no more than electoral slogans, as has already happened in other presidential campaigns. Eventhough the ServiceNation campaign is already working to ensure this doesn’t happen and has set up a movement that operates in every State and organised a summit, the one that will take place in New York on the 11th of September, that many people have compared to the 2007 President’s Summit. Then, all of the USA’s ex-presidents had gathered in Philadelphia to promote the voluntary sector but where met with a great echo on the media and proved of little impact.

Will Caroline Kennedy, New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg and the many other important figures of American politics that have worked to organize the summit be able to avoid making the same mistake again? According to many sources, including Time magazine who are media partners for the summit in New York, the two candidates have no escape route: by 2009 civil service will be made into law. Ted and Caroline Kennedy on the one hand and senator Orrin Hatch on the other are well aware of the trap: they know that social commitment is an issue that can make or break the elections.

Translation by: Cristina Barbetta