With public attention so understandably riveted on the economy, job prospects and the latest spate of scandals, it is perhaps like Don Quixote tilting at windmills to ask that some attention of policymakers be devoted to the Peace Corps. This unique U.S. government organization turned fifty years old in 2012, but aside from the two or three thousand celebrants who came for meetings in Washington, hardly anyone else noticed. And some might even ask, “Why should they?”
I would argue that policymakers should care because the Peace Corps is one of those “beacons of light” in American history, something so historic and of such significance that it is right up there with the Reconstruction of Europe after World War II, Passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, or the first election of Barack Obama in 2008. Creation of Peace Corps by the young President Kennedy was, in short, nothing less than America at its best—engagement with the world of the poor, engagement at the most basic level of the village, and engagement by those who truly are our “best and brightest.”
But historic events and the programs that they birth are somewhat like marriages decades later: the patina of innocence wears thin, and needs to be replaced by something deeper or else it begins to fade. The Peace Corps has faded. It needs to find a deeper and more meaningful role. It needs a public rejuvenation.
For those who, like me, have served as volunteers (I also served a stint as the agency’s assistant director under President Carter in Washington and, more recently, as country director in Uganda), we know that the basic magic still exists at the posts where volunteers serve: committed young Americans (and also a number of older ones as well) volunteer to give two years of their lives to live among the poor in foreign lands to help people develop the capacity to survive through health schemes, educational programs and economic development projects. One can hardly visit a volunteer in his or her village without a deep sense of gratitude, even awe. This is America—this is human nature—at its best.
But the eight thousand Americans living and working today in villages of the world are virtually ignored by Washington, at least in the most meaningful ways. Peace Corps has been nearly forgotten by a President with too many other things on his plate, and by a Congress that doesn’t care much anyway. And those volunteers living in villages without electricity or running water soon learn that Peace Corps Washington cares little about them as well.
In my recent book, Peasants Come Last, I chronicle how the Washington bureaucracy marches to its own tune—not to the needs of peasants around the world. I show in some detail how Peace Corps tries to run each post from Washington, often ignoring the highly trained and experienced people who they have appointed as their country directors.
Congress needs to rediscover this great American institution. The President needs to care more about it. And Peace Corps Washington needs to be shaken out of its bureaucratic complacency. Now that the President has been re-elected, he ought to devote an ounce of his attention to the Peace Corps he professes to love. Now that his first appointee, a nice man but too tired and too steeped in Washington bureaucracy to do much that mattered, is gone, the President has an opportunity.
Above all, public officials of all stripes in Washington, particularly those who profess to care about America’s role in the world, need to overcome their own myopia. Instead of facing only on the “big issues” of the day, they also need to focus on the smaller ones- small ones like the Peace Corps that can unite us, help the world, and be a sure plus for greater justice and opportunity.
