The Candidates and Public Service

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is providing amazing coverage of the presidental candidates’ involvement and approach to non profits, philanthropy, and public service.  Additionally they track congressional actions as they relate to non-profits.

Notable:

McCain supports the Troop-to-Teachers Act, a program to train veterans to become teachers, and introduced legislation to extend the program.

Obama has pledged to create a Social Investment Fund Network, which would distribute government and private money to charities working on innovative projects that focus on issues that have been identified by cities as priorities — crime prevention or education, for example — and help expand successful ones to other regions.

A friend of mine joked that the problem with Obama is that he is asking people to do too much; that he places too much responsibility on citizens to make change.  I found this ironic since the republican platform is that citizens should be responsible for creating the communities they desire. 

At the same time the key difference is that Obama plans to implement policies and programs to enable citizen participation, where as republicans seem to want to roll back government involvement in creating any kind of environment for action focusing on the market’s ability to inspire action based on citizens’ needs. 

What do you think of the candidates’ approach to public service?