PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

28served overseas with the Peace Corps.” 84Rice is convinced that the Peace Corps isKennedy’s most enduring legacy; he reveals his belief in the power of the volunteer bystating, “[t]he one constant throughout the Peace Corps’ history has been the work of theVolunteers. Once overseas, they are virtually immune to political vagaries and leadershipchanges in Washington.” 85However, as Rice goes on to argue throughout his book, it isthe politics that occur in Washington that most greatly affect the organization and itsability to place volunteers in the field. The health of the organization and recruitmentstrategies have had a major impact on placing the volunteers in service.Contrary to these accounts of Peace Corps’ early success, Karen Schwarz, arguesthat the organization was not based on idealism but rather that “idealism” was the PeaceCorps’ public face, its mythical image. Her analysis of the organization consists of astrong critique of the accepted perception of the Peace Corps as an organization free frompolitical bias and governmental tampering. She states, “[e]arly on, I discovered how farmy original idealized perception of the organization was from reality. The Peace Corps, Iultimately realized, is a kind of modern-day myth that projects an idealized portrait of theAmerican character.” 86Schwarz’s book, however, fails to note, as Elizabeth CobbsHoffman has, that “ideals and self-interest are not mutually exclusive categories inforeign service.” 87She argues that the United States has been its most idealistic duringits most expansionistic times. The Peace Corps is a way for the nation to convince itselfthat its enormous power is beneficial to others. Though Schwarz suggests that this wassimply a mythical story of an idealistic mission, she fails to realize that nations can doboth simultaneously with good intentions. My work, as a secondary contribution, helpsto advance the groundwork laid by Hoffman by arguing that the idealistic beginnings of