EDITORIAL.(Weekend)

Politics aside, we all can volunteer

There is nothing amiss in a president summoning his fellow citizens to tap their better selves.

President Bush has done this in asking Americans to perform some 4,000 hours of volunteer work over each of their lifetimes.

For more than a quarter of our population roughly 28 percent the request was unnecessary. They are busy at it.

The facts, as reported by The Associated Press, are that a Labor Department study suggests that 59 million of us devote an average of 52 hours a year to unpaid charitable undertakings.

But at that rate it will take us more than 76 years to meet the Bush goal. Even when …