Peace Corps Director
In 1968 Blatchford won the Republican nomination for the House of Representatives from the Los Angeles harbor district but lost the general election in a heavily Democratic district to Glenn M. Anderson in a very close race losing with 48.1% of the vote to Anderson's 50.7%.
In May 1969 Blatchford was appointed Peace Corps director by President Richard Nixon. At Blatchford's confirmation hearings he was questioned closely on his partisan political ambitions but there was no challenge to his qualifications for the post of Peace Corps Director. Blatchford was sworn in on May 5, 1969. "Joe Blatchford, throughout his private career, has had a tremendous interest in this kind of activity, particularly in Latin America," said President Nixon at the swearing in ceremony. "I am very privileged to have him as a member of the administration in this vitally important function. He has the responsibility, despite his very young years, to come up with new ideas. He has the opportunity to develop new programs and those programs will receive the very highest priority within the administration."
Read more about this topic: Joseph Blatchford
Famous quotes containing the words peace, corps and/or director:
“We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“He wrote me sad Mother’s Day stories. He’d always kill me in the stories and tell me how bad he felt about it. It was enough to bring a tear to a mother’s eye.”
—Connie Zastoupil, U.S. mother of Quentin Tarantino, director of film Pulp Fiction. Rolling Stone, p. 76 (December 29, 1994)