September 7, 2009 10:00 AM
As President Obama prepares for a first-of-its-kind address to the nation’s elementary and secondary students, Republicans are apoplectic and Democrats confused. Liberal Democrats are asking what’s so wrong with the president delivering an inspirational message to America’s students?
If it were any other previous president, Republicans would be hard pressed to explain their indignation. But the problem here isn’t that the President is addressing our nation’s youth. It’s that THIS president is doing it.
From his first moments on the national scene, President Obama has practiced a different kind of politics. In 1993, Hillary Clinton merely yearned for a new “politics of meaning.” Today, President Obama has nearly pulled it off. He and his adept team of sloganeers politicize everything – art, the Census, science, music, the Department of Justice, summer reading…heck, even happy hour.
This President is everywhere. Consider that in his first six months, President Obama gave more media interviews than his two predecessors combined, and held more prime-time news conferences (four) than President Bush did in his entire eight-year tenure. Even when he goes on vacation, he doesn’t disappear. Instead, he announces the re-appointment of the Fed chief, creates a special White House team to interrogate terrorists, warns about the swine flu, and, understandably, gives the eulogy at a funeral.
No matter where one turns, Obama is there – just as his salesmen want it. Their strategy: drown the White House Press Corps. By inundating the news cycle the Obama Team is able to keep members of the media from going in their own direction. Sure, reporters can always write a different story, but the Obama Team understands the Bully Pulpit. When the president speaks, his words lead. Everything else is just background noise.
But, much to their chagrin, something funny happened on the way to immortality. The American public has tuned our ubiquitous president out. As David Brooks noted last week, in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast. American adults are tired of seeing President Obama on television, hearing his voice on the radio, and reading about him in Time Magazine. And, unlike Skippy Gates, Joe Biden, and poor James Crowley, they sure as heck don’t want to join him for happy hour right now.
All of which brings us to the education speech. Though adults have soured on the president, the children are our future, their pliable minds Play-Doh for the president. The White House, of course, begs innocence. The president’s salesmen insist that the president will simply encourage students to take responsibility for their own lives and educations.
However, the original lesson plan released by the federal Department of Education for the speech instructs teachers to have their students discuss what the president “wants them to do,” and to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” Ask not what your Obama can do for you. Ask what you can do for your Obama. Add to the mix the words of domestic terrorists turned education “guru” turned Obama pal Bill Ayres, who once told an admiring Hugo Chavez that education is the “motor-force of revolution” and that the teacher’s primary purpose is to “carry a message of hope and possibility” and to “build a project of radical imagination and fundamental change.” That’s right. Forget about multiplication tables, verb conjugation, and the periodic table of elements. Hope and change is all you really need. President Obama is Bill Ayres’ perfect teacher, and American students are about to become his pupils.
The lesson plan has since been revised and Obama has distanced himself from Mr. Ayres, but the points remain. President Obama’s modus operandi is to politicize everything he touches. Republicans are more than justified to be skeptical of his intentions. And politics don’t belong in American classrooms.
Jay Barnes is an attorney and writer in Jefferson City, Missouri. He was formerly chief speechwriter for Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. His columns can be found at the Missouri Record.
President Obama’s modus operandi is to politicize everything he touches. Republicans are more than justified to be skeptical of his intentions.
