3.28.00
Engler's Choice

3.27.00
Rocky Times for Bilingual Ed

3.24.00
Crooked Coelho

3.23.00
Overdosing On Scandal

3.22.00
Playing Defense; Camelot's End

3.21.00
The Cox Boomlet Begins

System Error
When we heard that House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt was giving a speech today selling the Democrats as the party of America's high-tech economy, we decided to look for the text of Gephardt's remarks on his leadership web site. Big mistake. It hasn't been updated since November 9, 1999, and the page claims to be "under construction."

Engler's Choice
Just when it looked like Gov. John Engler had done all he could to oppose a school-choice ballot initiative in Michigan, he finds another way. Engler teamed up with Democrats and a handful of Republicans last week during budget talks to warn local school districts that they may lose state funding if voters pass the initiative, which would give vouchers worth about $3,100 to students in the state's worst schools.

Engler had wanted a budget bill to state that the initiative, if successful, would cost public schools $100 per student. The language was diluted to say that school choice "may" result in some unspecified loss of funds. But that's a detail. You can bet the Michigan Education Association is already writing ad copy that cites the threat; when they say this fall that a vote for school choice is a vote against public-school funding, they'll have a point.

Engler worries that the initiative will boost Democratic turnout, thus hurting both the re-election prospects of Spencer Abraham, who is perhaps the Senate's most vulnerable Republican, and his own chances of putting Michigan in the Bush column this November. He's also reluctant to participate in a knock-down-drag-out when a state judge could quickly nullify a school-choice victory, as happened in Florida two weeks ago.

Yet the intensity of Engler's opposition is troubling. It's one thing for him to call the initiative "a sure loser," as he has done; it's another for to do all he can to make sure it loses. School choice has become a cornerstone of conservative education policy. Engler isn't even making the conservative case against it (that it will invite regulations into private-school operations). Instead, he's using his total powers as governor to defeat it, and that has Michigan liberals snickering. "Michigan Education Association lobbyist Al Short suggested in jest that Engler might want to co-chair the voucher opposition movement--with former Democratic Gov. James Blanchard," the man Engler defeated in an upset ten years ago, wrote Peter Luke of the Booth Newspaper chain on Sunday.

There was once talk that Engler, who has been a leader in the charter-school movement, might serve as secretary of education in a Bush administration. Before that can happen, however, he will have to rebuild the bridges he's now burning.

And Forbes's
Steve Forbes will endorse George W. Bush for president Tuesday night.

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