Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [104]
The result was long Saturdays when Bruce might bring a six-pack of beer and Gene and Tom would find comfortable chairs. I would sit at my desk, Robert would be at the table with his laptop open in front of him, Jonathan would come in late but get the last chair, and John and Miles, as the last ones into the room, would be left with the ottomans, and John’s speech on the economy would take shape. Nearly the same group reassembled on each subject, with Derek taking the lead when the discussion was foreign policy, and Robert again in charge on education. The emphasis in the domestic policy discussions was always the same: close the gaps in the country.
There were counterparts in John’s Senate office. John was on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and he was working on developing public service programs in high schools. Wade and Cate’s high school had a public service requirement: students had to complete one hundred hours of public service—twenty-five hours a year—or they would not graduate. I was really interested in the policy, and I kept asking Robert, John’s brilliant legislative director, about it. Robert would talk to people who were providing volunteer programs in different places, in order to figure out the parameters of the programs and how much it would cost. One day, when I was in the office, I went by to see Robert and ask how it was going. Robert answered that it turned out to cost about $2,000 a child to have a public service program. Whoa. I told him how the public service program works in our high school. One woman, a neighbor, Jane VanGraafeiland, runs the volunteer office. The PTA helps her out; I think she has even had paid assistance now and again. But the office really is Jane. Students who find it hard to schedule community service can do their volunteer work in Jane’s office, taking telephone calls from people who have public service opportunities, making cards about the opportunities and posting them on the boards for other students, and making the confirmation calls when students turn in the hours they have volunteered. Jane found opportunities around the school for kids who had a job after school and couldn’t manage volunteering except during study periods. The WELL offered lots of opportunities, from tutoring to planting to painting at the Learning Lab. The Senior Center across the street. The child care center in the nearby projects. There was plenty of need. And managing it all, one full-time employee for a school of two thousand students. I am reasonably certain Jane doesn’t make $4 million a year, which is what she would be making if the federal government were paying $2,000 for each child. We needed to go back to the drawing board. This was Robert’s baby and John’s, not mine, so I left him with that. As positive an idea as it is—instilling in young people the habit of community service—I am pretty sure it never became legislation, probably for more than one reason. One is politics. The well-meaning interest groups that have a vested interest in the $2,000-a-student programs are powerful. The second is politics. No potential Democratic presidential candidate would be allowed by a Republican-controlled Senate to have a significant legislative accomplishment while running. And, honestly, the opposite would have been true if Democrats controlled the Senate.
This was my role in the Senate office and in the campaign. We hadn’t been in Washington for long, so we knew what public schools were like, we knew how crowded the emergency room is in a small city, we knew about bridges that needed repair and response to hurricanes and the elimination of coastal wetlands. And we brought those experiences to the table when policies were being discussed. When Michael suggested a College for Everyone program, John insisted on a work requirement, not because of something he’d read, but because of what he himself had learned. “I unloaded UPS trucks. It was the hardest work I ever did. I swept the mill, cleaning around men who stood at looms for