You Could Make a Radical Push for Grassroots Empowerment, Or You Could Just Cut a Country-Pop Record

John McClaughry, a contributing
editor here at Reason and a longtime stalwart of the
GOP’s small libertarian/decentralist wing, has been serializing his
memoirs at the Front Porch Republic site. In his latest
(and final)
installment, he has pretty much left national politics behind,
but he takes note of President George H.W. Bush’s rhetoric about
volunteerism and “a thousand points of light.” He meets with C.
Gregg Petersmeyer, who as director of the White House’s Office of
National Service is in charge of the points-of-light program, and
concludes that Petersmeyer’s “concept of that role was to organize
the power and majesty of the White House to bestow tributes upon
the (politically acceptable) volunteers and organizations working
for good causes.” This prompts McClaughry to write a memo to the
director, drawing on his experience in past “civil society”
efforts:

“Voluntary Action/Private Sector Initiatives” (or
whatever it is labeled) means different things to different people.
To oversimplify:

a) Well-meaning Republicans favor a typically upper middle class
view: those who have should take up a collection for those who
don’t. The collection finances Christmas turkeys and other
benefits. This is the “Lady Bountiful” approach: the gift can be
given and the recipients forgotten. Republican voluntary action
efforts have been plagued with this myopic perspective. Republicans
typically do not understand what life is like in a lower-income or
minority community, and are uncomfortable with spontaneous
grassroots efforts which seem to them to be potentially subversive
of the existing order, of which they general approve.

b) Liberals tend to think of using tax dollars to finance
institutions to assist the poor, thereby making themselves feel
good while sending the bill to an otherwise uncaring “society”
through taxes. This attitude gives rise to the “welfare-industrial
complex”, with the government financing an elaborate institutional
structure which employs liberals to take care of the poor. The idea
that their tax-financed institutions as often as not defeat the
self-help efforts of the poor rarely if ever occurs to
liberals.

c) People at the grassroots, faced with
collective problems, usually want the tools, resources and
opportunities to solve their problem themselves. They almost
invariably view government and other institutions as part of the
problem (usually true) and hate paying taxes to finance their
oppressors and pay for programs which don’t really do them any
good. They lean Democratic because of income and class
characteristics, but will vote Republican when the right candidate
comes along who speaks their language.

McClaughry’s memo goes on to identify an alternative
approach to fostering volunteerism, which would focus on
identifiying and removing “specific barriers to organized
grassroots self help.” It also warns that “Almost every ‘barrier’
was put there for a reason,” that “Some interest or institution
will oppose almost every proposal of any merit,” and that fighting
those battles “without the President’s clear understanding and
blessing is for you to call down much grief upon yourself with
little chance of a payoff.”

And there the memorandum ends. “Not surprisingly,” McClaughry
tells us, “I never heard from him again.”

So the Bush administration ignored McClaughry’s advice. What did
it do instead? So glad you asked:

The song
reached #3 on the Billboard country chart. (1991 was
not Nashville’s finest hour.) According to
The New York Times, the songwriters and a Bush flunky
“smoothed out the lyrics in a meeting.” Elsewhere in the White
House, a “Point of Light coordinator” helped “the President pick
his ‘daily point of light,’ a group or individual chosen every day
but Sunday for outstanding volunteer service.”

Bonus links: Past posts about McClaughry’s series can
be found
here,
here, and
here.