The Anti-Midas of Education

This presidential campaign, like, I suppose, all presidential campaigns has the anti-Midas touch. Everything it touches turns ugly and bad somehow.

The latest is that Obama has started dishing out "tough talk on education" as CNN says. And that's a good thing. After all, McCain has already put out his plan. While I have serious problems with McCain's plan, I do give him credit for being willing and able to put the issue up front in the campaign. I tend to agree more with Obama's plan with its emphasis on early childhood education and college affordability. He too goes down the road of charter schools and choice, but that just seems to be the way things go this year.

I'm happy because now they're both talking about education.

I'm upset because of how quickly the conversation about education turned into a conversation about how much the other guy sucks. Read the article on CNN I linked to above. It starts off with Obama's plan and by about midway through the article it turns into "John McCain hasn't done anything for education." "No, Barack Obama hasn't done anything about education." And then the verbal food fight starts.

I know this has been happening the whole time and I know it's not unique to this campaign. It's just that I wish that for once, everything this campaign touched didn't turn into trash.