I could say a whole bunch of things about why Matt Dunne should be Vermont’s next Lt. Governor, but I think I’ll just let Matt speak for himself.

Just take some time to read Philip Baruth’s excellent long interview with Mr. Dunne. And see why he not only has the intelligence to be a solid performer in the office, but a clear vision of what he wants to do — and an admirable philosophy of how public service can be far more than just a career goal.

Here’s a brief passage…

VDB: So people out there no doubt have heard of the physical part of the service politics projects — where you and volunteers go clean up a park, say. Can you talk a little bit about the thinking behind those events? How is that going to work once you’re in the office, assuming you cross the line before Dubie a week from now? What’s the philosophy?

Dunne: When AmeriCorps was founded, it was founded out of a concern that young people were becoming more and more detached from society. It was a good concern. Cynicism was rising, lack of participation in the political process was rising. The hope was that through creating the expectation of service, for one or two years, we would emerge with a new generation that would be committed to giving back, through both social mechanisms and political.

What was interesting — and when I got there it was the hottest topic in the AmeriCorps world — was that in fact more and more young people were doing community service, but it appeared that the more they did community service, the less interested they were in politics.

And there was this sort of crisis of confidence in the AmeriCorps community. How could this be happening? And my assessment of it was that the more people saw that they could make a real, tangible difference in a community, the more distant the political world felt. The smaller their one vote felt. The smaller their ability to overcome the huge amounts of money that were streaming into politics.

And I think that efficacy piece is what’s so critical.

VDB: Now how does that connect to the service politics exactly?

Dunne: As I was thinking about how to bridge those worlds, what I realized is that there’s a huge opportunity to do community service, and to invite people that already connect with that kind of activity, and then bridge it to the political world.

And so when we do our service projects around the state, we don’t go and just scrape and paint windows at a museum, or go and paint the inside of a Boys and Girls Club, or go and do work in a nursing home. We also go and have conversations about cuts in arts funding, about the importance of after-school time in Bellows Falls…

Matt Dunne, Shay Totten, Prop (kidding!),
Scudder & Peter Welch