‘Give Something Back,’ Bush Tells Americans

It was a setting eerily similar to the one Sept. 11, when President Bush sat before a gaggle of children to better display his warm and fuzzy side.

Only this time no aide interrupted by whispering to the commander in chief: “America is under attack.”

Instead, during a brief visit to Philadelphia on Tuesday to promote his volunteerism program, Bush found himself singing and gesturing his way through “Eensy Weensy Spider” with nine toddlers perched on their mothers’ laps at a shelter for women and children.

“Oh, yeah. One of my favorites,” the president said softly, as Khalil Shearlds, head teacher of the People’s Emergency Center, announced the tune.

Bush then joined in, albeit with somewhat less gusto than the rest of the gang.

He later addressed a gathering of volunteers at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and participated in a talk about good deeds.

By helping others, both domestically and around the world, Bush said, Americans will not only demonstrate their goodness but also “win hearts and souls and minds” in the Muslim world, a world filled with people who, he added, “don’t understand that we share the same values.”

Bush launched the USA Freedom Corps in his State of the Union speech in January as a way to foster volunteerism. At the same time, the president challenged Americans to give at least two years of their lives--the equivalent of 4,000 hours--to the service of others.

Since then, the program’s Web site has been visited more than 6.5 million times, and tens of thousands of Americans have expressed an interest in answering the president’s call, according to John Bridgeland, director of USA Freedom Corps. The program serves as the umbrella group for the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, all existing agencies, and the new Citizen Corps, which Bush created to give citizens a more direct role in domestic security.

Under the Citizen Corps, the Department of Health and Human Services is developing medical reserve teams that could respond to terrorist attacks, and the Justice Department is helping form “operation tips,” a type of super-neighborhood watch program that would, among other things, encourage transportation workers--such as truckers, letter carriers and ship captains--to report suspicious activities through a toll-free hotline.

Bridgeland, in a briefing to reporters, said 18,000 people have requested applications to join the Peace Corps, a 54% increase over the same period a year earlier; applications to Ameri-Corps are up by nearly half; calls to the Senior Corps’ toll-free number are up nearly 200% and almost 20,000 people have signed up to participate in Citizen Corps.

Citing some of the same statistics, Bush told his audience in Philadelphia: “In other words, Americans have been asked to respond, and they are.”

He also portrayed doing good as a direct, civilian response that matches the military effort in the war on terrorism.

“I believe out of this evil will come incredible good,” he said. “ . . . If you’re interested in fighting evil, love a neighbor. If you’re interested in doing something for your country, help somebody in need; write a check, give your time, volunteer.

“I believe that in order to live in a free society, you need to give something back. All of us owe something to America. And one way to provide that is either through the military or through loving somebody and showing it through actual deeds. . . . It is a part of a complete life.”

Bush’s visit to Pennsylvania was his 10th since the disputed 2000 presidential election. Pennsylvania is a key battleground state in most presidential elections; in 2000, it narrowly went to Democrat Al Gore.

After returning to Washington, he attended an evening fund-raiser expected to bring in $400,000 for the political action committee headed by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).