New York Times opinion columnist David French recently offered a tidy framework for understanding Donald Trump’s political durability: many voters support Trump’s objectives, but reject his methods. That asymmetry—popular ends coupled with polarizing means—helps explain both his staying power and his ceiling. In contrast, French observed, Democrats often have the opposite problem: they benefit from opposing Trump’s methods, but struggle to rally support for their own policy aims. Nowhere is this dynamic more vivid—or more consequential—than in education policy, where Republicans often undercut themselves with overreach, and Democrats suffer from failure to persuade, either due to unclear positions or a disconnect with the concerns of the broader public.
Consider the ongoing firestorm surrounding Harvard. The Trump administration, through Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, has taken aim at elite universities over their handling of antisemitism—a concern shared by many across the political spectrum. A sharply worded letter from the U.S. Department of Education to Harvard, later disavowed by the department, transformed what might have been a principled investigation into campus discrimination into a muddled episode of heavy-handedness and backpedaling. The pattern is familiar: a popular objective, holding higher ed accountable, undermined by inconsistent and improvisational methods. Democrats were quick to seize the moment, but their standing is weakened by their own record of using federal levers—Title VI, Title IX, and student lending—to pressure colleges in ideologically charged ways. The result is a credibility gap on both sides: a legitimate issue that neither party is positioned to address effectively.
A similar pattern has emerged in K–12. The Trump administration’s approach to federal education research has been anything but strategic. Rather than rethink the mission of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), it was haphazardly reduced to rubble. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the cornerstone of education transparency and comparability, has been caught in the crossfire. To its credit, the administration is now turning its attention to the task of reforming the agency. But the episode underscores a familiar tension: It’s one thing to criticize federal bloat or take aim at long-standing norms, quite another to replace them with something better. What could have been a thoughtful push for modernization risks becoming a case study in ideological self-sabotage.
This is the Trump team’s education dilemma in miniature. They’re on strongest footing when spotlighting outrageous excesses; think DEI bureaucracies run amok, activist professors defending Hamas, or elementary schoolers exposed to fringe ideologies. These are the education equivalents of protesters waving foreign flags atop burning cars in American streets—visually charged, politically effective, and tailor-made for outrage. But when the administration pivots from symbolic targets to clumsy execution, like floating visa cancellations for students over old op-eds or botching major federal functions, they lose the thread. They shift from exposing overreach to embodying it. The White House seems quite okay with this asymmetry and continues to embrace the theater of grievance, even when the policy backend is incoherent or constitutionally suspect.
If Republicans suffer from a surplus of zeal and a deficit of execution, Democrats face the opposite challenge: a crisis not of tactics but of vision. They remain effective at pouncing on GOP missteps, as when Trump’s ham-handed intervention at Harvard managed to cast the school as an object of sympathy, allowing Democrats to deflect attention from the underlying problem. These reactive wins, however, mask a deeper vacuum. Since Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign marked a clear break from the education reform priorities of previous Democratic administrations, the party has largely outsourced its K–12 agenda to the teachers unions.
The result has been a platform that closely mirrors union orthodoxy: more money, less work, less testing, and no accountability. During the pandemic, this dynamic was laid bare as union leaders—Randi Weingarten chief among them—successfully pressured Democratic officials to keep schools closed far longer than public health data supported. In her case, the party’s entanglement with organized labor was literal: she simultaneously served as union boss and DNC member. Today, many of the same voices are working to rewrite history, insisting that they fought to reopen schools. But the damage wasn’t just educational. It was also political. By handing the policy reins to adult interests, Democrats have struggled to offer families, especially in working-class communities, a compelling vision of educational excellence.
Last month’s announcement that Weingarten is stepping down from her role on the Democratic National Committee offers a moment rich in symbolism—and perhaps opportunity. For years, her dual identity as union boss and party insider has exemplified the Democrats’ education dilemma: an approach more attuned to the interests of the adults in the system than to the needs of families or students. Her exit could create space for a course correction, especially at a time when parental frustration and student learning loss remain politically potent. But unless Democrats reclaim an education agenda rooted in outcomes, rigor, and real opportunity—and unless Republicans can pair their instincts with institutional competence—the nation’s schools will remain trapped between two parties that each get something right, but neither gets it all the way.
