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Although he was active in the 1960 presidential campaign, Shriver will not participate overtly in the Kennedy clan's campaign plans for re-election next year. At least not while he remains director of the Peace Corps: "I think that as long as I'm head of a national bipartisan agency, I should stay out of it. The commandant of the Marine Corps doesn't go out campaigning for a candidate, and neither should the Peace Corps director."
As for the future, Shriver has long coveted the Governor's spot in Illinois. For a while, he seemed a good bet to run there in 1964. But Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, Democratic boss for the state, let it be known he would probably support the inept but subservient Democratic incumbent, Otto Kerner, for reelection. At about that point, Shriver began prolonging his Peace Corps plans.
In Greenish Awe. He doesn't seem unhappy about it, insists with rah-rah resonance in his voice, "I have the best damned job in Government." In that job, he has logged 350,000 miles in visits to corps outposts in 35 countries. He has had three cases of dysentery, has learned to sleep sitting up in a Jeep, become adept at a variety of native dances, gobbled countless stomach-churning helpings of local dishes while his staff looks on in greenish awe.
Since the whole Peace Corps philosophy is by definition antagonistic toward showy special treatment for Americans abroad, Shriver travels tourist class on planes, refuses to carry a dinner jacket on his tours, usually arrives at embassy receptions driving a Jeep. The Peace Corps is frugal: its volunteers collect from $53 to $220 as a monthly living allowance, depending on where they are and what job they are doing. Shriver, despite his considerable personal means, is frugal too. He once dispatched an aide to buy him a new shirt in Guatemala City, was appalled to find that the man had paid $8.95. Shriver ordered the shirt returned to the store, wore a dirty version until he got something cheaper. Another time, he spent 20 minutes scrambling under a shack in the Philippines, looking for some coins that had accidentally fallen through cracks in the floor.
A New Cry. He is immensely popular with volunteers (by a rough headquarters count, there are some 100 Peace Corps dogs around the world named "Sarge"). The volunteers write him personal letters, and he tries to answer every one. One girl in the Philippines made him a beneficiary in her Government life insurance policy.
Shriver is proud of his organization. He makes dozens of speeches to college kids, usually includes this thumbnail history of the Peace Corps: "Two years ago, the skeptics and the cynics were convinced that modern Americans were too flabby in body, too flaccid in spirit, to meet the rigorous challenges of life in the underdeveloped world. Today, we know from experience that the skeptics and cynics and doubters were wrong. They have changed the world's slogan from 'Yankee go Home' into a new cry: 'Send us more Peace Corps volunteers.' "