There were many routes to the podium at last week’s Republican presidential debate. Even with Rick Perry’s withdrawal from the race, the primary field is the largest in a century, and every candidate has taken his own path to the bright lights. Donald Trump has been carried along by his immense personal charm. Carly Fiorina leveraged her initial success among the mop-up squad to change the inclusion rules and gain a place at the top of the polls. Scott Walker got in…well, for reasons no one can quite remember now, but he’ll be damned if he’s heading back to the Great Madison Brat Fest with anything less than a VP berth in tow.
So with a slate of eleven(!) competitors and a run time that made The English Patient look like a particularly spritely episode of Glee, how was it that education never got an invitation to the party? While Jeb Bush was busily defending his brother’s national security record and Fiorina was helping Trump to a yuge slice of humble pie, we Fordhamites were left waiting for someone to mention the fifty million American kids just starting their school year. And apart from the thrilling interlude of the alpha dog’s perfunctory swipes at Common Core, we are waiting still.
It’s probably naïve to assume that a policy dialogue will suddenly break out during the rhetorical free-for-all of a primary debate. There are too many soundbites-in-waiting for the discussion to be given over to the problems facing our students and teachers. (Though that’ll never stop earnest think tank types from wishing it to be so in the cockles of our wonky little hearts.) But it is dangerous to get too cynical about the purpose of campaign events like these—even if we’re fourteen months out from the election, and even if we’ll all soon be fed to our back teeth with the spectacle of going-nowhere candidates hurling specious accusations and taking phony umbrage.
It may seem unlikely at the present moment, but one of the mud-caked gladiators on that stage will ultimately have a 50-50 shot at capturing the White House. And no matter who wins in 2016, his presidential agenda will largely be shaped by the expectations he set during the campaign—at televised debates and rubber chicken dinners in South Carolina, in stump speeches and the official party platform. Political scientists have shown that presidents generally fulfill many more campaign promises than they break, and even priorities that eventually fall by the wayside (think of President Obama’s professed desire to close Guantanamo Bay) tend to do so only after a cursory effort has been made on their behalf. Once a contender telegraphs his intentions on a given issue, either as a genuine statement of purpose or as an overture to an important constituency, they become very, very difficult to walk back. Unless presidential aspirants are made to take a stand on education, there will be no way of measuring their progress later on, when today’s white papers become tomorrow’s committee markups.
Even more than as a tool of accountability, however, public policy debates are critical events that are necessary for their own sake. They allow parties the rare opportunity to clarify their stances and coalesce around the prerogatives that matter most to their voters. Last Wednesday’s debate, in other words, wasn’t blood sport—or at least, it wasn’t intended to be. It was a team sport, meant to shape the tone, identity, and commitments of the future Republican Party. Fresh ideas stagnate in the absence of these debates, and the policy realms that aren’t mentioned simply don’t count for much.
Ah, you retort, but does this argument really apply to movement conservatives in the present moment? This is, after all, a party that has recently found national champions in figures who pledge to abolish the Education Department entirely. The rightward thrust on education, exemplified now in the debate over ESEA reauthorization, points toward a gradual unwinding of the federal role: Undo coercive national measures, revert power to the states. If the broad strokes of your strategy can fit on a bumper sticker, do we really need countless candidates to bloviate about it in countless forums?
The answer is yes. If a major party’s policy prescription is to drastically alter the status quo, it’s under more obligation to hash it out in public, not less. Voters need an opportunity to get onboard with the changes that a President Rubio or Christie will bring. Making that even more true is the hellish difficulty of determining exactly where the American people stand on education; even when it comes to charged issues like Common Core, the most recent public opinion polling has yielded diverging results. The next chief executive may face a lonely task in shepherding our nation’s schools. That’s why it’s crucial that he starts building some limited consensus now.
School choice, standardized testing, accountability, social mobility: These are issues that will change the lives of our children, who will go on to control the destiny of our democracy. But they don’t seem to matter at all to national Republicans in this presidential cycle.
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