In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created America's first domestic national service program: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). As part of this program—the largest and most highly esteemed of its kind—nearly three million unemployed men worked to rehabilitate, protect, and build the nation's natural resources. It demonstrated what citizens and government could accomplish together. Yet despite its success, the CCC was short lived. While more controversial programs such as President Johnson's Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and President Clinton's AmeriCorps survived, why did CCC die? And why—given the hard-won continuation and expansion of AmeriCorps—is national service an option for fewer Americans today than at its start nearly eighty years ago? In The Politics and Civics of National Service , Melissa Bass focuses on the history, current relevance, and impact of domestic civilian national service. She explains why such service has yet to be deeply institutionalized in the United States; while military and higher education have solidified their roles as American institutions, civilian national service is still not recognized as a long-term policy option. Bass argues that only by examining these programs over time can we understand national service's successes and limitations, both in terms of its political support and its civics lessons. The Politics and Civics of National Service furthers our understanding of American political development by comparing programs founded during three distinct political eras—the New Deal, theGreat Society, and the early Clinton years—and tracing them over time. To a remarkable extent, the CCC, VISTA, and AmeriCorps reflect the policymaking ethos and political controversies of their times, illuminating principles that hold well beyond the field of national service. By emphasizing these programs' effects on citizenship and civic engagement, The Politics and Civics of National Ser Melissa Bass is an assistant professor of public policy leadership at the University of Mississippi. The Politics and Civics of National Service LESSONS FROM THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS, VISTA, AND AMERICORPS By MELISSA BASS BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS Copyright © 2013 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8157-2380-6 Contents Preface.............................................................................ix1 Introduction: National Service as Public Policy for Democracy.....................12 Citizenship and the Elements of Policy Design.....................................113 The CCC's Roots and Relationships.................................................374 The CCC's Purpose and Government's Role...........................................425 The CCC's Tools, Rules, and Targets...............................................566 VISTA's Roots and Relationships...................................................817 VISTA's Purpose and Government's Role.............................................888 VISTA's Tools, Rules, and Targets.................................................1149 AmeriCorps's Roots and Relationships..............................................14910 AmeriCorps's Purpose and Government's Role.......................................16011 AmeriCorps's Tools, Rules, and Targets...........................................19612 Making Sense of the Past and Its Lessons for the Future..........................229Notes...............................................................................249Index...............................................................................295 Chapter One Introduction: National Service as Public Policy for Democracy In the weeks following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush encouraged Americans to go shopping and to visit Disneyland. At a time when the president enjoyed near-universal support for his handling of the crisis, this bully pulpit directive fell conspicuously flat. It turned out that Americans wanted their president to ask more of them. Several months later, Bush changed his appeal: he stopped telling Americans to shop and started asking them to serve. The president's call for Americans to engage in service to their communities and country, echoed by presidents who came before and after him, builds on the nation's long and cherished traditions of local volunteering and citizen service in the military. However, the call for citizens to participate in programs such as the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps is both relatively new and repeatedly contested. The American experience with civilian national service—with federal programs that engage participants in work, at home or abroad, that fills a public need, typically done by young adults paid subsistence wages for a year or two—dates back only to the New Deal and has had a rocky, but instructive, history. In 1933 President Roosevelt created America's first, largest, and most high