The gloves are off. What remained last week of bipartisanship on education in Washington has been buried. And education may yet turn into a major issue in the 2012 presidential race.
All this in the wake of Rick Perry's weekend entry into that race. Though the Governor has not (yet) put education on his campaign agenda?it is not, for example, one of the four issues highlighted on his new Perry for President website?he has, on multiple occasions, depicted Texas as an independent-minded model of educational progress. Everyone knows that he wanted no part of Race to the Top" or of Common Core standards. It's no secret that he thinks the federal government should butt out of just about everything. Or that he has many bones to pick with higher education in the Lone Star State and beyond.
In what may be a sort of prophylactic move by the Obama administration, yesterday Arne Duncan, usually a nonpolitical sort of guy, went after Perry, six-guns blazing, regarding the Texas education record.
Perry's folks have already responded to Duncan, and we must assume that more of this sort of combat lies ahead. And not just with Perry. Shrinking the role of government?every government?in education is one of Michele Bachmann's favorite themes. (Though she doesn't yet have it on her website, either.)
Until this week, I thought education would be a minor topic in the 2012 election, as in 2008, partly because other issues loom larger but also because Duncan and Obama stole so much of the traditional GOP ed-policy thunder as to leave Republican candidates with little to say that's fresh or differentiating on this topic. But I didn't reckon with Perry and Bachmann. And I surely never imagined that Duncan himself would cast the first stone.
Perhaps he was glad to get even with Perry's denunciations of RTTT. Most likely, he got into stone-hurling mode because the White House has instructed everyone in the administration to pelt Perry as often as possible and from every direction. Perhaps the Texas governor has them worried.
?Chester E. Finn, Jr.
