Viewpoint: Public engagement in the Obama era

Reprinted from BaltimoreSun.com

By Andrew L. Yarrow and Stephen B. Heintz

From President John F. Kennedy to President Barack Obama, from the Peace Corps to the Corporation for National Service (if not throughout American history), "public service" has been lauded, despite Americans' sometimes conflicted feelings about government. By the same token, a different but parallel American thread - from the Founders and Tocqueville to social critics David Riesman, Christopher Lasch, Robert Bellah and Robert Putnam - has concerned the value of "public engagement."

While both strands are seen by advocates and political philosophers as crucial to the sustenance of a strong, healthy democracy, the two are distinct, though often conflated: Public service can mean anything from serving the nation in the armed services or civilian branches of government to charity work and volunteering. By contrast, public engagement means giving more than one's labor; in its truest form, it requires that citizens move far beyond the old service model of volunteering to think about issues, deliberate about them and act on them, thereby stimulating action by other individuals, by private organizations and ultimately by our public officials.

Jefferson, Madison and the other intellectual and political titans who forged America recognized clearly that free societies cannot remain free without the active engagement of their citizens. Disconnects between a cliquish leadership and the people are recipes for a hollowed democracy, a "checked out" populace, and government by the arrogant and elite.

President Obama, on his second day in office, issued a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies calling on them to "establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration." As the memo said: "Public engagement enhances the government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge."

Laudable sentiments indeed. But how practical is such a neo-Jeffersonian idea in a nation of 305 million people, dispersed across a continent, worried about their personal well-being and distracted by TV and the Internet (and, once upon a time, by shopping)? Wasn't Mr. Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, right in his landmark 2000 book, Bowling Alone, that Americans are increasingly disconnected from not only their political structures but even their neighbors and communities? Although Mr. Putnam acknowledged that civic engagement has waxed and waned throughout our history - flourishing, for example, in the generation after World War II - he documented the long demise of community groups and other traditional channels for public engagement during the last third of the 20th century.

Aside from President Obama's rhetoric - and the activism brought out by his historic campaign - evidence suggests that public engagement once again may be waxing in American life. Volunteerism and voting, two admittedly imperfect measures of engagement, are on the rise. The numbers of Peace Corps and Teach for America applicants are soaring, and a 2008 study by the Corporation for National and Community Service - the federal agency that supports programs such as AmeriCorps and Senior Corps - showed that volunteer service is up, particularly among college-age Americans. At the same time, voter turnout in November 2008 reached a 40-year record of 62.5 percent.

That the winds of change may be blowing is also suggested in a newly released report by Public Agenda and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, finding that Americans have strong positive feelings about voting and being engaged in their communities, with 90 percent to 95 percent of those who voted reporting feeling enthusiastic about that experience. These research findings are especially noteworthy in light of the protracted election disputes and allegations of electoral fraud and dysfunction during the last decade.

Furthermore, three-fifths of survey respondents said that they planned to participate in community organizations "as much or more" than they had in the past. Mr. Obama's calls for service and citizen engagement in public policy issues provide an official imprimatur for public service and engagement. The options for ordinary citizens are many, including: attending a town hall meeting, hosting a fundraiser for a cause or candidate, serving on a board or committee, or participating in a voter registration drive. These are simple ways we can create a new definition for an "ownership society" by recognizing that we own our nation's and communities' problems and can work together to solve them.

All these are good omens for believers in an engaged citizenry. The philosophy of public engagement - espoused by those across the political spectrum - spells more than just greater commitment to our nation and our communities and an implicit optimism that individual and public action can make life better. As the Obama memo suggests, it also means better, more creative national problem-solving.

Polls and political rhetoric do not mean that throngs of Americans suddenly will start to gather in schools, community centers and living rooms to try to address health care reform, global warming, economic problems or terrorism. And even if players as different as Mr. Obama and Google can use vaunted tools and technologies to bring people together, there is still a long way to go, culturally and practically, to provide the structures, time, comfort and platforms necessary to enable citizens to deliberate meaningfully about public issues and influence our political leaders. But this is precisely what public engagement - and, for that matter, participatory democracy - is about.

In other words, 305 million heads are better than the relative handful of talking heads in Washington, the media and academia.

Andrew L. Yarrow is vice president and Washington director of Public Agenda and author of "Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility." He teaches government and U.S. history at American University. His e-mail is ayarrow@publicagenda.org. Stephen B. Heintz is president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.