Primed for Failure

I'm a firm believer that schools are a lever by which we can change much of society. Education provides many of the tools that will help individuals plan their own course in life. However, we can't just plop a kid down for 6 hours a day in a classroom and expect that to overcome all obstacles. School is great, but we can't expect it to work miracles.

I'd be curious to hear what the no-excuses idealocrats have to say about last Saturday's article in the New York Times about immigrant high schoolers who are just not receiving their first ever formal education. The story opens by talking about an 18 year old Liberian girl who last year entered school for the first time. Think about that. In terms of school-based skills, she's essentially a kindergartner who's thrown into a high school setting. Is she supposed to be able to pass a regent's exam by the end of the year?

The killer for me is that "state education officials do not offer a suggested curriculum, provide any additional financing or track their progress. Last year, New York City provided ... about $165 extra per person; they are entitled to the same extra services as others who are still learning English, but nothing more." That's just ridiculous.

It may or may not be fair to expect schools to overcome these kinds of challenges. Let's assume that because we don't have anything better, the responsibility falls on the schools. If that's the case, then we need to make sure that schools have the support they need to provide the support that the kids need. This holds true for whatever background the kids may be coming from. If we just dump kids into the school system and say "deal with it" then we're setting the schools up for failure. That's not in anybody's interests.

Further Negotiation

As expected, Obama's insisted willingness to meet with leaders of enemy countries is not going down well in some (many) quarters. The charges of naivete and inexperience are out in force.

Before I go any further, I should reiterate that I'm not a foreign policy expert and don't really know what would actually come with negotiations. That being said, I think many of the arguments used against possible negotiations are faulty on the face.

The big one I've been hearing has to do with this notion of giving legitimacy to whoever we negotiate with. I guess the thinking is that by having the president sit down with a foreign leader we grant added stature to that leader. I'm not really sure if that's the case. Take the case of Iran. In whose eyes would we be granting Ahmadinejad legitimacy? He's already the leader of his country and is probably well respected among his allies. Furthermore, we acknowledge him as the leader of Iran, which in itself seems to be what would most confer legitimacy. It doesn't seem realistic that he would gain greater legitimacy by meeting with an enemy (like Obama wouldn't gain more legitimacy in this country through the meeting).

In terms of his enemies, Ahmadinejad wouldn't be gaining much legitmacy with them either. It's already clear that he's a force to be dealt with in one way or another. A meeting also wouldn't lead to a wide scale reassessment of him and cause western powers to say, "Maybe he's not so bad after all." So the legitimacy thing doesn't make sense for me.

There's also the danger of appearing weak and emboldening our enemies. That's not an argument against negotiations. That's an argument for having smart negotiations.

As Bill Clinton quotes repeatedly in his autobiography, Israeli leader Rabin commented before meeting Arafat, "You don't make peace with your friends." We can't act like fifth graders and say "I'll talk to you, but I won't talk to you because I don't like you." That policy only gets you so far. It certainly doesn't lead to peace. It's time to acknowledge that.

Is McCain Right?

The answer to the above question depends on what you mean by right. If you mean the sense of correct in his worldview and proposed actions, the answer is no. If you mean conservative, the answer is resoundingly yes, despite the bloviating of Rush Limbaugh et al.

Let's take just two examples of McCain's supposed liberal leanings: voting against the Bush tax cuts and immigration reform.

First, voting against the tax cuts was actually a pretty conservative thing to do if we assume that conservatives are the ones who want to be fiscally responsible and limit the size of government. The reason for his no vote was not that he doesn't think rich people should be allowed to keep more money, but rather that it didn't make sense to cut taxes without correspondingly cutting spending as this would require running a deficit. (This should be a familiar idea for anyone who's read Barry Goldwater's Consience of a Conservative.) Since Bush was actually increasing spending at the same time he was cutting revenue, the "conservative" thing to do was vote no on the cuts. In that sense, McCain was more conservative than our darling president.

Second, the immigration reform debate has been hijacked by morons and nut jobs so any labeling of liberal and conservative on the issue is pretty skewed. The Republican party seems to have taken on the general consensus that illegal immigrants (all 12 million of them) should be rounded up and deported. No one has yet produced a plan for how we should go about doing that because, well, it's probably impossible. Anyone who says otherwise is operating in a realm outside of reality. So McCain takes the position that we've got millions of people in this country, many of whom are contributing to society, and we should work with what we've got rather than chase pie in the sky notions of Old West-style roundups. He's not proposing amnesty or opening the borders to the poor, huddled masses. He's just not giving into hysteria. His position isn't liberal so much as sane.

(On a related note, The New York Times reported today that maybe the immigration situation isn't as out of control as we've been led to believe.)

The point I'm getting at here is that even with the issues on which he's being called liberal, John McCain is still taking on conservative positions. That doesn't even touch on the issues like abortion rights or war in the Middle East in which even the far right wing has to see a kindred spirit. There's no doubt that McCain is running in the primary in which he belongs. He isn't liberal and he isn't even really that much of a maverick.