Take On the Talking Heads
George W. on Schools
by Garry Wills
April 13, 2000 -- Pat Buchanan and his ilk have for years lamented that conservatives win electoral battles but somehow lose the cultural war. Ronald Reagan takes office to bring big government to its knees -- and he leaves behind a bigger government than before (plus a staggering deficit). Ditto George Bush. Before those two, Richard Nixon increased government programs and expenditures in just those areas conservatives most deplore -- including legal aid and the National Endowment for the Arts.
How to explain this combination of tactical advance and strategic retreat? Buchanan attributes it to a nefarious "liberal establishment," lodged mainly in the press and the academy. But there is a simpler explanation. The battles won are waged on principles that guarantee losing the war.
The Republicans, for instance, have followed Richard Nixon in running national campaigns to crack down on crime. This was the "law and order" issue on which Nixon made Spiro Agnew his top cop.
The problem here is that crime is predominantly a state and local issue. By the principles most Republicans profess, that is where it should remain. The advocates of small and decentralized government are not very convincing when they call for beefed-up crime programs at the federal level. But they do it, simply because that is an issue that resonates with their constituents, who want to hear their candidates beating their chests, even if that either (a) makes no sense for believers in "states' rights," or (b) leads to programs that undermine states' rights.
We are getting spectacular demonstration of this dynamic in the present campaign. The Republican Party is on record as so opposed to federal intervention in the educational system that it has for years tried to abolish the Education Department -- or, if the department must continue to exist, to render it ineffectual.
That is an understandable, if not correct, position. After all, the federal government is responsible for only 7 cents out of every dollar spent on education in America, and why should it have power where it does not foot the bill? An alternative might be for the central government to spend more in order to justify its interference -- but Republicans oppose that, too, on general anti-tax grounds.
So Republicans should work on changes in education at the state level, if at all. But behold George W. Bush promising, like his father, to be the education president and putting lots of dollar signs all around his activist rhetoric for a federal role.
Bush wants to impose standard tests, though his ideological allies join Lynn Cheney in denouncing national standards. He wants to impose "local control" by nonlocal pressure. He has a school reform agenda that he not only wants to take into the White House; he also wants it to put him in the White House.
This is appealing to Bush in the short run. He has little to boast of in any case, and one of the few things he can display with pride is improvement in the Texas schools. One can argue about what credit he deserves for this. His office is constitutionally weak, and many think education changed course in Texas when a strong committee under Ross Perot laid down new rules in 1984.
Bush is not thinking about the long run. The long run is full of ironies. The short run promises a victory. Federal elections give Republicans a chance to voice grievances that they say should not be federal concerns. It is a temptation they rarely resist, which explains why they prevail in elections and fail to live up to their own ideological standards. They engage in self-erasing crusades.
Copyright © 2000 Universal Press Syndicate
