There's a new Chief in town

As we all watch the latest to come out of the Obama Administration, a [fairly] new announcement is sure to impact the focus of this particular publication.
Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education, hails from Chicago schools where he sat as the superintendent. While there, he worked to hold schools accountable while still keeping people concerned with the schools happy. Hailed by news agencies far and wide, his reputation proceeds him. In Chicago, he worked hard in the 3rd largest school district in the Nation to raise student achievement and close schools which were not improving, usually to measurable gains. The New York Times reported on his nomination here.
My interest in this news break is not that he has been nominated, but the message paraded with his nomination, that he is in fact one who could mediate between the two main camps of education minds in America: those who believe in teacher's unions, such as the NEA, the nation's largest, and those who believe in quick school reform. The differences between these two groups could not be larger.
On one side, teacher's unions believe that teachers should be sheltered and protected from the sweeping hand of reform. These believe in automatic teacher tenure, and rights of the teacher over the administration. While unions have their advantages, they also create problems
in turning schools around, touted as America's answer by others.
This other side, represented by people like Joel I. Klein, of NYC Public Schools, and Michelle Rhee, of D.C. schools, and groups such as Teach For America. This camp, usually to the opposition of teacher's unions, pushes for reform in sweeping fashions. They dismay the unions because their sweeping reform usually targets teachers who have become too comfortable in their jobs.
Duncan's role in the Obama Administration stands to bridge the gap between these two groups, and move education in a positive direction despite the ongoing debate between these two camps. How is this possible? These two groups are so opposed and so backward that they have very little in common. They constantly fight to push their platforms, which may or may not be the best goals for the students. While this candidate might be the best Obama had to bridge this gap, does that mean he is better than Klein or Rhee, or any number of other reform candidates? It appears that in the quest to find the perfect mix, we might just get a washout. It is far too early to tell, true. But we must keep striving to find answers. We must all pay attention to the growing debate between these two camps, and the movement on behalf of Duncan to bridge this gap. After all, isn't it the children which should be the focus of America's education system?

Dynamic Politics

In this day and age, the face of politics is changing dramatically. So much that even in a single campaign, one cannot completely nail down the policy of oneself yet alone one’s opponent. This election season, nothing could be more murky than the politicians’ understanding of their opponents. Nothing could be more clear than the changing nature of political engineering and political thought in the US. This leaves us, the voting public, to think critically about the party platforms of both candidates, and think critically about them.

This current presidential campaign has been a campaign which will be analyzed through out history. It is a situation where history has already been made, and will continue to be made throughout the next presidency. The candidacy of Barack Obama as the official Democratic Presidential nominee, and the presumptive Republican Vice-Presidential nominee in Sarah Palin give us a chance to re-evaluate our conception of the office of the President. Although this is an important aspect of American history, what does it mean practically in this era, in 21^st Century American politics?

This situation of having two brand-new types of candidates means a changing nature of the race we have seen so far this election season. Sen. McCain can no longer attack Sen. Obama on the basis of experience because he has a VP is much more inexperienced. Obama cannot attack McCain for being too old and out of touch quite as easily as he did before Palin came onboard. Similarly, it is hard for Obama to attack McCain as too much institution, when he himself has Biden, who is more senior in the Senate than McCain. The platforms have shifted. The status quo has shifted.

The platform of “change” became real to Democrats and everyone else in tune to Sen. Obama’s acceptance speech Friday night (estimated at 38 Million viewers). He unveiled the grand master-plan that his constituents and on-the-fence voters were waiting. Among his many propositions were a plan for energy independence in 10 years, heavy research in renewable energy, social security reform, education reform, and more. In contrast to his platform of “change”, he pointed out that his opponent, Sen. McCain, though wishing he was a maverick, wasn’t all that different from his party. With endorsements from a despised President, a voting record of Republican ideology and a lack of foresight on energy and foreign issues, Sen. McCain has towed the line 90% of the time. He put the ball in the Republican’s court. With McCain’s selection of a Vice-President nomination, McCain seems to be responding, however feebly.

Sen. McCain’s claim that he is a maverick would have been much more solidified had he gone with a better VP pick. Had he chosen Sen. Lieberman, he would have sent the message that he plays well with others (across the isle that is), and that he wanted to play the change game too. The problem with such a pick would have obviously been that of his own party. If he had picked some one on the moderate side of his party, such as Mitt Romney, or in Lieberman’s case, an Independent, he would have proven to the “evangelical” voting base that he did not at all have their interests in mind. He was struggling with that from the get-go, being far from the portrait of the model Christian Republican that George W. Bush painted in 2000. By selecting this much more right-wing Republican as a running mate, he appealed to that base.

If by some misguided illusion he thought he could bring a few Clinton sympathizers with his flashy new VP, he failed. The voters who supported her throughout her candidacy would have been much more inclined to switch parties for a McCain/Lieberman ticket, not a pro-drilling, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Bush, pro-war, anti-environment platform. Sidling up to a woman in the White House is only a very small part of the Clinton equation. Palin’s lack of feminist qualities and feminist appeal will repel those voters much more than a more moderate ticket would have.

The details of the McCain-Palin ticket won’t be completely articulated until later this next week, when the Republican National Convention kicks off in St. Paul. A word to the wise: don’t anticipate a shockingly-new platform. In fact, if you want to get a bit of a preview, just get a hold of some footage of the 2004 RNC.

Though this campaign season will become much more complex and heated as the season progresses, we can already see where it is going. It is a competition over who can be the most change appealing without contradicting themselves more than the other. There will be mud-slinging. There already has been. There will be promises of reform; there already has been. There will be one winner, in the end.