8/18/00 1:00 p.m.
Family Man Al
Gore on school-choice.

By John J. Miller, NR's national political reporter

ice President Gore almost strayed off the teacher-union reservation on Thursday night: "I want you to know," he said, "as president, I will stand with you for a goal that we share: to give more power back to the parents to choose what your own children are exposed to, so you can pass on your family's basic lessons of responsibility and decency."

So long as it occurs in the public school your children are assigned to attend by a government bureaucrat! Gore made that clear a little later: "I will not go along with any plan that would drain taxpayer money away from our public schools and give it to private schools in the form of vouchers." (Those "No 38" placards seen on the convention floor were in reference to California's Proposition 38, a school-choice initiative.)

Gore's idea of choice in education is universal pre-school and expanded after-school programs — parents presumably can choose to enroll their kids or not. How these options aid parents who, as Gore says, are "trying to find a little more time to spend with [their] children" is unclear.

All week long, the Democrats have said they're for working families. Nouns are supposed to trump adjectives, but when a Democrat says "working families," it's hard not to believe the reverse is true.

On the Site
Ramesh Ponnuru calls the Gore speech a disaster.