Some pundits have called John McCain's Republican Convention acceptance speech the worst in memory --dull, uninspired, and lacking in substance.
Maybe. The only acceptance speech I remember is John Kerry's unfortunate "I'm John Kerry. And I'm reporting for duty." I don't recall if it got any better after that.
I admit I liked the end of McCain's speech about how his POW experience humbled him and made him a less self-centered, less reckless man. At least it sounded authentic. BUT the middle part of the speech, the policy recitation, was indeed "dull, uninspired, and lacking in substance."
Pure boilerplate.
It's surprising that after taking great pains to avoid mentioning George W. Bush by name, John McCain would advocate policies virtually identical to the policies of -- George W. Bush, from tax cuts to open markets, from a strong defense to a culture of life, from personal responsibility to "drill baby drill", from "strict constructionists" to fiscal responsibility. (Oops! Ignore that last one. I don't know that "borrow and spend" and driving up the debt to $9 trillion dollars is a good model for fiscal responsibility.)
The two policy proposals that struck me as the most Bush-like, and the most troubling, involved health care and education. Here's what McCain said about health care:
"My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His [Obama's] plan will ... force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."
I can tell you from personal experience that the only "bureaucrat" who stands between me and my doctor(s) has been a pencil-pushing employee of my private insurer, ODS. So please, John McCain, spare me the "socialized" medicine scare talk.
Then there's McCain's reference, straight out of Bush's 2000 campaign, the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute, and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, to education as "the civil rights issue of this century."
What does that mean? Simply put, it means school choice and charter schools. It means vouchers. It means the dismantlement of public education. It means the abolition of the common school which, for more than a century, has been the great leveler and melting pot of American democracy. And sadly, it means the demise of the neighborhood school, the very heart of the American community.
For those of you who have read this site, you know how I feel about charters and vouchers and No Child Left Behind, the Bush initiative that does the opposite of what its title implies.
Unfortunately, the neoliberal drive for school "options" and market-based school accountability infects both major political parties. But more on that in a subsequent post.
Suffice it to say that most politicians (and educational "leaders") know shockingly little about what goes on in the public school classroom. Or for that matter, in any classroom.
Comments