Sen. Obama Should Change the Subject

The long Democratic primary process has worn down everyone involved in it, including my preferred candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). His unique qualities — freshness, smarts, appeals to voters’ idealism (particularly young voters), the promise of a new way of governing — are still there. But he needs to change the subject from well-aired issues — his healthcare plan versus Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.), ending the Iraq war — and from irrelevant sideshows — wearing patriotic pins and his personal responsibility for other people’s remarks. The way to do that is to open a conversation about a subject that has not been a part of the campaign to date, one that is intrinsically related to his personal image and message and shows him to be fresh and hopeful and invested in his country.

That issue is mandatory uniform national service. Those of us old enough to have matured in draft years served our country and feel proud, in retrospect, to have done so. My children’s generation hasn’t had that experience. As a result, their attitudes about patriotism are different. The newest generation — “Millennials,” as they are described in a new book by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais — will be appealed to by this idea, and they are both the recruits for national service and the fresh blood of the body politic — Democratic and Republican voters, as well as independents.

If every young man and woman, after high school or at age 18, and every immigrant seeking citizenship were required to perform a period in some sanctioned public service capacity — military, understaffed schools, poverty areas, for example — for a minimal salary, they and their country would be well-served. The options should be versatile and broad-based, offering career training to some, an opportunity to grow up and serve their country for all.

There is no downside. National public service is patriotism at its most real. There are models that could be employed — the old CCC of FDR days, the Peace Corps and Vista from the JFK era, Americorp of the Clinton administration, the national draft, public service programs of philanthropies and faith-based organizations, and many more.

A proposal for a program of mandated national service would give the campaign a shot in the arm, open a fresh, substantive, public conversation, and spiritually would fit perfectly in with Sen. Obama’s political journey. He should change the subject and lead the movement for this idea.