Internet Scofflaw

So the president’s school speech turned out to be unobjectionable. That’s no surprise. All the scrutiny made it impossible for them to get away with political content. And once the text was announced, I agree with Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) that keeping kids home from the speech would be silly.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that Robert Gibbs was right that the controversy was unjustified. The American people have good reason not to trust this president. He observes no distinction between campaigning and governing, and he has already demonstrated a willingness to use the organs of government for propaganda purposes.

But what really gave people reason for concern was the Department of Education’s lesson plan, which made the indoctrination aspect of the affair explicit. (Gibbs did not see fit to address that in his remarks.) The department backpedaled on the lesson plan, which they certainly would not have done without the controversy.

So I would say that the whole controversy had a good outcome. The speech turned out to be unobjectionable (we have no way of knowing what it would have been otherwise), and the lesson plan went away. Gibbs had it exactly wrong: the public scrutiny, far from being unjustified, worked exactly as it should, keeping the administration honest.

What happens now? I don’t think the controversy is entirely over. Certainly there will not be a Congressional investigation as there was after President Bush (41) spoke to students in 1991. But I do think two more things will happen to prolong the controversy:

• First, it will be revealed that some teachers used the original indoctrination plan, despite its withdrawal.
• Second, Democrats will use this affair to try to paint the opponents of President Obama’s agenda as somehow irrational. “Remember when Republicans got all worked up over the school speech, which turned out to be fine?” they will cry. To that, we will respond that we had every reason for concern, and it turned out to be fine because we got worked up over it.

(Previous post.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.