Ladewig said:
Bush quoted statistics about drop-out rates and 10th grade test scores, but I doubt that Bush was in on the scam. I cannot classify Bush's bragging as "lies."
On the other hand, Ron Paige, current Secretary of Education, either knew that people were committing fraud or should have known that people were committing fraud. He should be held accountable™ and lose his current position.
The part I find scariest is neither the administrators cheating nor their excuse of "people were confused by the numeric coding system used to track students," but rather that they had a 25-35 percent drop-out rate and one school decided to make it zero. If they had choosen 9 or even 5 percent, they might have gotten away with it. Even the dimmest student cheater knows not to alter the gradebook to show 100% on the final exam after scoring 65 for the whole semester.
I know I shouldn't get into this, but here goes.
Bush never lies, apparently. He does, however, seem to rely a lot on people who do lie, misconstrue, misquote, knowingly distort or misdirect. He doesn't seem to have to pay a price for it.
THis, one might argue, is something all politicians do -- honest or not. The problem I ultimately have, however, is at some point we, as a nation, pay a price for this, even if Bush doesn't have to.
The No Child Left Behind policy, highlighted earlier this week by Bush in St. Louis, was built on, premised and justified by Texas results in general and Huston results in particular. Now, we know it is a distortion, but I doubt the Administration is going to suggest to Congress that this policy be reconsidered.
The Iraq war, justified in part, on erronous information regarding the imminent danger Iraq posed to the US because of WMDs. Though we got into that battle to make sure that Saddam didn't work with terrorist to use those (seemingly non-existent) weapons agains his neighbors or the US, that rational has gone by the way-side. Today, we are proud to have overthrown a petty-Hitler and any argument that the premis was faulty or distorted is responded to with: but aren't you glad that Saddam is in custody, and do you want him back in power? No, of course, but if our actions are based on lies and falsehoods, than we betray ourselves and our ideals, I respond, and by betraying our ideals we walk down the slippery slope that allowed so many Iraqis to support and learn to fear Saddam for so long.
Not to get back into the whole Clinton-hater debate here, but when Clinton lied out-right, which he did, people understandably castigated him. But it seems like the people who condemn Clinton or Hilary or Dean or Democrats across the board for distortions and misleading the public on policy, etc., never seem to have the same contempt for Bush, who does it all the time also.
What was good for the goose, isn't good for the gander, I guess.
However, I keep coming back to what I also thought about Clinton, and policy making in general, if the policy is based on a lie, distortion or erroneous information, it will ultimately fail, leaving us in worse shape than we are in, and even if it seems, at first to be successful.
Not arguing, from my standpoint, that the Iraq policy has been successful, or that, for instance, Bush's economic, education, healthcare policies have either, but shouldn't supporters willing to forgive Bush for relying on faulty information and publically using it, constantly, begin to worry that he might also be relying on faulty, erroneous, wrong and decietful information privately? And, isn't relying on such -- either publically to justify policy, or privately to formulate policy which is than justified publically -- doomed to failure?
Just thinking here.
