William Bennett is an unlikely candidate for conservative cult-hero. A graduate of Harvard Law with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas, Bennett seems more at home in the ivy tower than in the ideological trenches; talking to Bennett is more like talking to a professor than to a politician. Ask him a question and he folds his hands and gazes into space, visibly thinking about what you’re saying. It’s very gratifying.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, his professorial bent, Bennett is exercising a growing influence on American education. He is eloquent, outspoken, and intellectually fearless, rushing in where politicians fear to tread. He has attacked the “educational establishment”; advocated mandatory AIDS testing for marriage licensees, prison inmates, and hospital patients; criticized colleges for tolerating drugs; decried “peace education” programs that ignore the evils of Communism; called for a cap on federal aid to college students; and assailed universities for hiking tuition.
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