Since 1994, about 100,000 citizens, most of them in their late teens or early twenties, have enlisted for a year of national service in AmeriCorps, a signature New Democrat initiative championed by President Clinton. They have taught, tutored, or mentored two million children; operated after-school programs for about half-a-million kids from low-income families; helped more than 200,000 senior citizens live independently; planted 52 million trees; and established 40,000 patrolled "safe zones" in neighborhoods and schools. In turn, they have also earned college scholarships for themselves, and undergone the increasingly rare experience of working with and for fellow citizens from different races, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds.

AmeriCorps represents a non-bureaucratic way to address social problems while helping young Americans earn the opportunity to go to college and reinforcing an ethic of mutual responsibility and patriotism. It is opportunity, responsibility, and community in action.

So why not transform AmeriCorps from a worthy but small initiative into a truly national form of national service? That is the challenge posed by journalist Steve Waldman in the new Spring 1999 issue of Blueprint: Ideas For a New Century. Waldman proposes that national service be made universal, defined as "a common expectation that young Americans have for themselves." To make that possible, he recommends an expansion of national service opportunities to include one million Americans by 2004, by (1) doubling the size of AmeriCorps, (2) creating 300,000 part-time and summer community service positions for high school students, (3) returning to the original mission of the College Work-Study program by reserving half of the one million annual work-study slots to community service positions instead of supplying cheap labor for colleges themselves, and (4) creating a new domestic GI Bill that would give young people scholarships but rely on community groups to pay for their living expenses.

Not so long ago, when congressional Republicans annually threatened to kill off AmeriCorps entirely to secure concessions from its proud sponsor in the White House, Waldman's proposal would have been viewed as naive, if not laughable. That's changed.

The new climate of GOP support for national service is partly attributable to hard work by Eli Segal and former Senator Harris Wofford (D-PA), the two directors of the Corporation for National Service (which oversees AmeriCorps), to disarm conservative critics by linking national service to measurable results of value to the communities served.

Something more fundamental is at work, however, in reviving Republican interest in national service and other public efforts to stimulate civic action. The GOP's shrill anti-government rhetoric of recent years has pretty much worn out its welcome with the American people. The "compassionate conservatives" surrounding Governor George W. Bush (R-TX), the "national purpose conservatives" quietly helping Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and the "empowerment conservatives" working in Congress to promote civic action have all concluded that government has a necessary and appropriate role in working with businesses, non-profit organizations, and community-based initiatives to deal with the country's most pressing social challenges.

New Democrats reached the same conclusion years ago from the opposite direction. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) began championing national service in the mid-1980s because it (1) embodied a lost ethic of active citizenship and mutual obligation once central to Democratic values, and (2) offered a potential alternative governing model to the old welfare state's habit of addressing social problems through centralized bureaucracies and entitlement benefits.

The newfound interest of conservatives in the nexus between public action and civil society shows that national service, and other civic action initiatives, are slowly but surely emerging into the political limelight. As Elaine Kamarck, a PPI senior fellow and a key advisor to Vice President Al Gore, recently told the Washington Post, "It's no accident that (Gov. George Bush) is stealing the DLC themes because they are, in fact, winning centrist themes."

New Democrats should welcome this flattery-by-imitation from the right, but they should begin challenging conservatives to put their money where their mouths are, by supporting universal national service.