Washington Monthly - September/October 2012 - (Page 16)

headline “‘No Child’ Law Whittled Down by the White House—Waivers for 26 States.” The headline suggests, as does a considerable part of the article, that there may be something scandalous going on. It’s not until the eleventh paragraph, which doesn’t appear until the jump page, that the reader is given any idea that the administration is granting the waivers to provide flexibility and persuade states to adopt its Race to the Top program— though the words “Race to the Top” never appear in the article, and the program is only briefly explained in two of its twentynine-paragraphs. Ironically, a subsequent lead editorial in the Times, instead of questioning Race to the Top, praised it for providing incentives for reform that are “long overdue. The other piece was headlined “Obama Biography Brings New Scrutiny to President’s Own Memoir.” Its author, Michael A problem with Obama books What is most gratifying about Michael Grunwald’s The New New Deal is that it gives full attention to explaining the good Remembering Raspberry about Obama’s stimulus program while also acknowledging the not so good. Most William Raspberry was one of Washingof the books about Obama, even excel- ton’s genuinely wise men. As a black man he lent ones like Jodi Kantor’s and Noam had the courage to criticize his fellow blacks: Scheiber’s, devote considerably more atten- “civil rights leadership, for all its emphasis on tion to exploring Obama’s psyche or what desegregating schools, has done very little is wrong with his approach to governing. to improve them.” This was written in 1982. Kantor’s book The Obamas, for instance, It is lamentably true today. Just last year, while calling the president’s legislative ac- Adrian Fenty, the first mayor to have the complishments “extraordinary,” devotes courage to take on the issue of teacher qualiless than one page—it’s 192 if you want to ty, was turned out in favor of Vincent Gray— check—to listing them. whose administration has been characterized by one scandal after another—because of Gray’s support by the largely black D.C. Clinton’s catch-22 teacher’s union. As the Clintons were entering the White House in January 1993, I wrote an article Fun with complex for the New York geometric shapes Times Magazine advising them about Not only have Republican legislatures The political scientists Norman Ornstein what to do and sought to suppress Democratic votes by and Thomas Mann challenge the what not to do. passing voter ID laws, they are removing Among my sugges- Democratic voters from close congressiomedia to make clear to the public tions was not to nal districts by redistricting. In Pennsylvathat congressional Republicans repeat the mis- nia, for example, Naftali Bendavid of the take I thought Wall Street Journal found that as a result of and Democrats are “no more Hillary had made redistricting, Republican Representative necessarily equally responsible than with the Clint- Lou Barletta had gone from “vulnerable to on education pro- iron clad.” A map of his district showed that a hit and run driver and a victim.” gram in Arkansas. it had been radically reshaped. What would Before introduc- have fit into a circle now requires an irreguShear, explains that “there are new ques- ing the Clinton bill in the legislature, she lar elongated rectangle. This made sure not tions about how closely the president’s tell- had toured the state, holding meetings only that many Democratic voters were now ing of his life hews to reality.” But we don’t to discuss the bill’s possible contents. By excluded, but also that the most likely Demencounter the first example of this depar- the end of her tour she had stirred up so ocratic opponent was placed just outside the ture from reality until the sixteenth para- much opposition to the possible reforms district line. graph of the article, and what a shocker it that the teachers held a near riot outside the is: Obama said his step-grandfather was governor’s mansion and the Clintons had Making the same mistakes again killed “while fighting Dutch troops in Indo- to abandon the cause of education reform. nesia,” when in fact he “died trying to hang So my advice was that when she had a ma- Read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Little America drapes.” Obama has talked a lot about his jor reform in mind, she should get her own and weep. In Afghanistan, Foreign Service real grandparents, but he has never made bill together in private and send it to Con- and USAID employees are largely sealed off a big thing out of the story of his step- gress. That is exactly what she did with the from Afghans, rarely fluent in the local langrandfather, which easily could have been Clinton health bill, and she was pilloried for guage, frequently serving tours too short for family myth handed down to him. The oth- it. As the criticism mounted, I was hoping them to understand the people or the couner illustrations offered by Shear struck me no one would remember how wrong I had try, and throwing too much money at probas equally trivial: Obama combined the sto- been. Or at least I thought I had been wrong, lems that are usually far more complicated ries of two early romances, and he smoked until Obama got savaged for not sending than we understand. It is the same story more pot in high school than his own book Congress a finished bill but instead allowing that we found in the Green Zone of Baghhad implied. Congress and White House staff to shape dad, which in turn repeated the sad story of September/October 2012 it along the way. If there was ever a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, this was it. 16

Washington Monthly - September/October 2012

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