Ask and All:  A rallying cry to the nation

As the 2024 presidential election cycle heats up, candidates are highlighting what they intend to offer the American people — such as lower taxes, a secure border, and higher wages for striking workers. Given Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit, candidates might consider what they will ask of them. A good place to start is a new call to service to inspire Americans to work together on public challenges across politics, race, and regions of the country. If history is any judge, Americans have responded to calls to service that awaken them from their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things. Think of the citizen soldiers from the American Revolution, the aid societies of the Civil War, the civil rights movements to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and the explosion of volunteer associations at the turn of the last century. Each required service and sacrifice — whether military or civilian — and enabled citizens to create a more perfect union.

Presidents who have embraced the service ethic have seen an overwhelming response. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps in March 1933 to protect public resources and prevent starvation during the Great Depression. Within three months, 250,000 young, unemployed men were serving on public lands. More than 3 million served in the CCC over the course of a decade, making our public places better for all of us.

In October 1960, Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy challenged University of Michigan students to serve in developing countries. More than 10,000 students nationwide signed a petition urging Kennedy to follow through. The Peace Corps has enlisted more than 240,000 Americans in service to 143 countries and millions more have entered public service at home.

Other presidents have summoned generations of Americans to contribute to their country.

Lyndon B. Johnson created Volunteers in Service to America during the war on poverty; Richard Nixon tapped older Americans to serve through Senior Corps; and Jimmy Carter regularly volunteered at Habitat for Humanity.

Ronald Reagan called volunteer service, “a deep and mighty river flowing through the history of our nation”; George H.W. Bush inspired Americans to become “Points of Light”; and Bill Clinton created AmeriCorps, in which 1.2 million Americans have served.

George W. Bush’s Freedom Corps after 9/11 expanded existing and new national and volunteer service programs to the highest levels then and since, and Barack Obama signed the bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law within 100 days of his inaugural, unleashing new service corps across federal agencies.

A major new call to service could not come at a better time. Trust in and understanding of one another and institutions are at staggering lows; Americans are tuning out of politics; and participation in civic intermediary institutions that knit people together — faith-based, civic associations, local newspapers, and unions — are all significantly down. Nearly half of Americans under 30 report “feeling down, depressed, or hopeless,” and 24 percent have considered self-harm, according to Harvard’s Youth Poll. Service can help young people find the belonging and purpose they need — and deserve.

There are signs of hope. Increasingly, we see young people creating new enterprises to tackle public challenges and local and state leaders engaging citizens in service. Maryland is creating service opportunities for young people graduating high school. In Massachusetts, for over a decade, youth leaders from 351 cities and towns have worked together in service teams, touching more than a million lives in a wide variety of ways.

More Perfect has collaborated with 10 leading organizations on an inspiring plan to make national service and volunteering a rite of passage for millions of Americans. Presidential candidates might adopt it.

Since 9/11, the country has created ways to measure progress on national service and volunteering, and regular reports chart patterns across indicators of our civic health.

Groundbreaking research by Robert Putnam provides a way out of our civic, social, and economic slumber — showing an “upswing” from the early 1900s through the mid-1960s driven by ground-up, community-based service. Coupled with national leadership, voluntary associations led to greater social cohesion, political comity, and economic equality. Such efforts even resulted in a stronger, measurable culture of “we.”

America could use an upswing that inspires each of us to make contributions to our nation. Presidential candidates would be wise to ask Americans to give back to their communities and country, rather than just offering to do things for them.

The late Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.), after helping create the Peace Corps, and overseeing AmeriCorps, left our generation a two-word challenge at the 2014 Summit at Gettysburg to inform any call to service:  “Ask and All.” It was a rallying cry to generations to commit to a culture of service.

As presidential candidates develop their platforms to inspire the American people, those words could inform their own rallying cry to the nation.

Deval Patrick is co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and former governor of Massachusetts. John Bridgeland is co-chair and CEO of More Perfect, an initiative of all 14 Presidential Centers to advance five democracy goals, and former director, White House Domestic Policy Council for President George W. Bush.