In today's speech??(see here, too), Barack Obama said:
For decades, [Washington's] been stuck in the same tired debates over education that have crippled our progress and left schools and parents to fend for themselves. It's been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform.?? There's partisanship and there's bickering, but there's no understanding that both sides have good ideas that we'll need to implement if we hope to make the changes our children need.?? And we've fallen further and further behind as a result. ?? ??
If we're going to make a real and lasting difference for our future, we have to be willing to move beyond the old arguments of left and right and take meaningful, practical steps to build an education system worthy of our children and our future.??
Those lines might have made sense a decade ago, but is he forgetting No Child Left Behind? There's plenty to criticize about the law, but there's little doubt that it was a bipartisan effort that moved "beyond the old arguments of left and right." Where are the props for George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy?
