It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office:

Barack: Hey everybody, what’s the difference between a progressive and a toilet?
Rahm: I give up, Mr. President.
Barack: The toilet doesn’t follow you around after you use it.
[Entire Cabinet]: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

A few days ago Chris Bowers, one of the progressive blogosphere’s smarter and more influential voices, announced that he was becoming a conservative Democrat. His reasoning was compelling. Let me sample a bit for you (and encourage you to go read the rest as soon as you’re done here).

You can “endorse someone other than a Democrat for President, and then have the Democratic leadership do whatever it takes” to keep you in the Party. “You get ten times the media mentions that one gets being a progressive.” You get “more money, too. You can proclaim that you are a conservative Democrat, and still have small, progressive, grassroots donors be by far your top contributors.” You can “hold up, water down, and threaten whatever Democratic legislation you want” with no consequences at all. “You get frequent meetings with the President and proclamations that he is one of your own.” If you bitch about it you get “threats about never hearing from the White House again.” You’re “far more likely to receive a major cabinet appointment. Not even counting the Republicans, New Democrats outnumber Progressives in President Obama’s cabinet by 7-1.” And that’s not nearly all.

Okay, so maybe Bowers isn’t really abandoning his fellow progressives. Maybe he was just being a smart-ass to make a point. I can’t say I approve of such tactics, but hey, my old pal Jonathan Swift was known for the occasional snark, so who am I to judge?

The point is that progressives have a beef with the new fauxcialist administration, and regardless of what you think about their issues, their analysis or their personal hygiene, a review of the facts certainly justifies their pique. Think about it.

• Obama the Campaigning Man was pretty clear in his disdain for the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama the President has apparently decided that gay rights can wait. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Don’t bother.)
• Candidate Obama was balls-to-the-wall about greening the economy, and I mean yesterday. President Obama, whose favorability rating is running better than 2-1 for, seemed unable or unwilling to expend some of that political capital on the just passed ACES bill, which many experts think will accomplish diddley (or worse). (Again, whatever the eventual reality about this bill turns out to be is irrelevant – the point is that Obama did not act in accordance with the more progressive stance he had taken earlier.)
• And what about health care? A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for “a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans.” How overwhelming, you ask? Overall 72% were in favor of the “public option,” and 57% said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to get it. Hell, 50% of Republican respondents want it. So, you have very high approval ratings. And you certainly have a significantly greater mandate than George the Conqueror did after nipping John Kerry in 2004. You have significant majorities in both houses of Congress. You have overwhelming popular support for a public option. And you can’t get it done? Seriously?

I’m sitting here trying to figure out why corporate America, which would stand to benefit tremendously from having the burden of insuring the citizenry lifted from its shoulders, isn’t in open revolt. (That part of corporate America that doesn’t include the insurance industry, I mean.)

It has been observed that the Republicans seem to be more effective with a minority than the Dems are when they have the entire country by the balls. GOPpers derail the train by threatening a filibuster, but the Democrats can’t seem to head off a bad idea with a damned-near buster-proof majority. How the hell is this possible?

This, of course, is what’s known as a “rhetorical question.” The butt-obvious answer is that the contemporary Democratic Party is not really a party, at least not in the same way that the GOP is. Instead, it’s a bizarre amalgam of progressives, “moderates,” bipartisan fetishists, “New Democrats,” DINOs and opportunistic Republicans (see Specter, Arlen). The median at present lies significantly to the right of Richard Nixon, who despite the recent revelation that he was in favor of abortion in the case of half-breed fetuses, posted a record that would make him pretty darned progressive by 2009 standards. (Good thing you dodged that bullet, huh Mr. President?)

Ultimately, Bowers and other frustrated progressives are right. The Democratic party just isn’t that into them. They’re useful when votes are needed, but are utterly incapable of leveraging that into actual influence. As far as the “responsible” centrists are concerned, progressives are the late-date with no self-esteem, the unwitting fat chick at the pig party.

So, what to do?

Playing along isn’t working. So how about rounding up all the members of the Progressive Caucus (and their many allies around the country) and opting out? Leave the Democractic Party. Form a third party of their own (or just join the Greens). All of a sudden the Democratic Party has a numbers problem. All of a sudden they lose majority status, chairmanships, agenda-setting stroke, etc.

I’m no expert on the rules of the American legislature, so I’m sure there are nuances I’m missing. Nonetheless, I imagine the Republican wing of the Democratic Party would wet itself. And in the short term this could be very good for the GOP, which would find itself in the plurality.

Longer-term, though, it seems like the progressives can make an argument – and one that is supported by some actual evidence – that they represent the will of a goodly slice of the American public. Even better, given how the youth vote seems to be trending, they can also argue that their hand is going to strengthen over time. Are these premises accurate? Hard to say. But they are testable hypotheses, and the posit is certainly plausible enough to be worth examining.

Maybe the remaining Dems respond by making the reality of the situation official and decamping for the GOP. Maybe the Blue Dogs and the “moderate” wing of the GOP abandon those pesky snake-handlers on the right and form a new “centrist” coalition. Who knows. If that did happen, however, America would at least have the refreshing luxury of an opposition party that, you know, opposed. We could get all that corporatist DC clutter, which thrives because it dominates both parties, up for a real referendum. What a campaign hook – America vs. the Beltway.

Part of me says “what if it backfires?” But the other part of me looks at the state of the current union, at the looting of the last eight (or, depending on your taste for the long view, 29) years, at the energy way too many Americans have to devote to worrying about what happens if they get sick or injured, at the staggering cost associated with continuing to fuck around with the environment, at the fact that millions and millions and millions of citizens have no hope at all of financial solvency, at the knee-buckling stupidity of a populace that’s been victimized by a brilliantly conceived War on Education, at…. Fuck it. You get the picture.

Off your knees, progressives. The worst that happens is more of the same. At the least do us the favor of dying on your feet.

Eric frames this week’s conversation nicely:

In sum, the key is that this accountability encompasses both personal and societal responsibility. We all have a responsibility to provide every child with a level and quality of education so that they are likely to develop into healthy and competent adults—both society and individual parents. This means that there is two-way accountability. Primarily, there is societal accountability — has the community, usually through the government, provided the infrastructure and policies needed so that students can get a high quality public education? Parents shouldn’t feel they must pull their students out of school because they are unsafe or have, let alone, detrimental learning environments.

He then poses some questions:

• What is the community’s role in protecting children?
• How does infrastructure (empowerment) relate to interventions (direct protection)?
• How far should homeschooling accommodations go?
• When is homeschooling not an appropriate education?
• How far can progressive protection go?
• Is homeschooler protection different than public school protections?
• Did the California court go too far when it required homeschoolers to have credentialed instructors?

As I note on the thread, over there, this is a sticky issue that’s bogged down in several centuries of ideology.

As I contemplate the issue of homeschooling I can’t help empathizing with all the parents out there who feel a need to do so because our public system is such a failure. If I had a school-aged child right now I’m not sure what I’d do.

Ultimately I think this is a symptom of our nation’s foundational estrangement between individual and government. I’m not sure if any nation in history has been more thoroughly founded on the idea that the government is not to be trusted than ours, and while I see why it happened (and harbor a measure of distrust myself), this ideology breeds an irrational faith in the wisdom of individuals – to listen to conservatives talk, it’s almost like there’s no such thing as an idiot who shouldn’t be trusted with a decision – and a pathological refusal to invest in collective structures to our own benefit. It’ as if we’re incapable of understanding that the word “invest” DOES apply to public institutions. As I wrote a few months ago, a dollar spent on education is at once a dollar spent on health care, the environment, arts, and every other form of human endeavor imaginable.

All my yarping doesn’t suggest much in the way of actionable tactics, I know, but it seems to me that this is one that can only be truly solved once we evolve a more enlightened understanding of the role of government in our society, and that’s a long war on centuries of misguided paranoia, isn’t it?

Thanks to Eric and his colleagues at RI for addressing these kinds of important topics in such a thoughtful way.

On the learning front, America is an object at rest, and objects at rest tend to remain that way until acted on by some force. The good news is that if we’re able to set our society in motion, that momentum then becomes something we can leverage in our long drive toward a sustainable culture of education.

While EdF1rst will generate meaningful results within the scope of my first term, the full impact of our efforts won’t be seen for perhaps a generation. Does this doom our project? Are Americans incapable of voting for the long-term future of their children? Maybe, but the stakes are too high for us not to try. We must be willing to play to the historians, not the pundits.

Over time, we must transform America into a genuine culture of learning. Families must believe, as mine did, that education is their best hope for a sustainable future, and they must be willing to act forcefully and meaningfully on this conviction. Children must grow up in homes where commitment to education is an assumption that’s embedded in the very DNA of family and community life. In neighborhoods where teachers are revered. In classrooms that are safe and nurturing. In a nation that values you for what you know, what you can do, how you can contribute.

In order for this to happen, we need a multi-pronged strategy that address both reality and perception.

• Our schools must show results in ways that families and communities can recognize, and quickly laying in the infrastructural reforms described elsewhere in my platform will be a critical first step.
• We will develop an innovative multi-channel public information campaign that stresses the benefits of the EdF1rst initiative and highlights its successes. This initiative will leverage every creative tool at our disposal, including both traditional broadcast and innovative social media channels.
• We will utilize Internet and mobile technologies to establish advocacy communities to encourage hands-on investment in the educational process.
• We will recruit spokespeople and success stories from across the entire spectrum of American life to promote the long-term benefits of a genuine commitment to learning.
• We will ensure that our communications efforts are two-way, dynamic and thoroughly interactive.

We must never lose sight of the fact that as society evolves, so also must our educational programs. We will never stop revising, growing and improving, and we will never stop asking our citizens to help us understand how this might best be accomplished.

The discipline question is one of the most difficult ones facing this campaign, and even as we construct the strategic platform plank we’re sobered by the tactical realities that must be faced.

Some schools are dangerous places. A lot more are significantly less effective than they should be because of disruptive students and the fact that we seem not to have the mechanisms to deal with them. A couple problem students can have a dramatic impact on the function of the classroom and the resulting learning by other students. The DS08 campaign does not believe anyone has a right to infringe upon the learning atmosphere, because in doing so they undermine the ultimate goal of universal opportunity.

Obviously, the details on this issue are, and will remain, sticky. We probably don’t want to return to the sorts of classes my generation endured, where teachers not only had unquestioned authority to administer corporal punishment (sometimes for “fun”), but it’s just about impossible to ignore the correlation between the elimination of corporal punishment and the rise of discipline problems. Even if we were to adopt corporal punishment measures, it’s hard to envision how they could even be implemented in environments where gangs are overtly present.

We must and we will develop “big carrot/big stick” measures to assure the sanctity of the teaching environment. Students who cannot be persuaded to learn will be removed from the environment and alternative programs for their habilitation will be developed. Teachers will be armed with the tools they need to make sure their classrooms and hallways are safe, pro-learning spaces. In the short term this may imply security measures that seem heavy-handed, but it’s our expectation that a systematic rewards model that shows meaningful results will eliminate the need for “stick-first” approaches in due time.

Schools are not warehouses and they’re not detention centers for juvenile delinquents. Teachers aren’t prison guards and when we ask them to be every student in the school suffers – with consequences that endure for the rest of their lives.

The unfortunate truth is that not all can be saved, and the only rational policy response to this fact is to assure that those who cannot and will not respect the sanctity of the educational environment will be excluded.

Our curriculum will foster generations of students who, if dropped into novel, unfamiliar, even hostile situations, with few tools at their disposal, can nonetheless think their way to success. The story of past American triumph has always been about resourcefulness, and a renewed commitment to inculcating ingenuity will assure countless future chapters in that story.

Critical thinking is also our best hedge against tyranny and corruption. Our current administration has done all in its power to promote vocational learning while stifling the Liberal Arts, and this is a strategy that brazenly serves one master – the economic power elite. It has encouraged all manner of abuses in its quest for a “do, don’t think” society that profits the haves and assures that the have-nots stay in their place. A strong commitment to teaching social studies, civics and history will go a long way toward inoculating young Americans against home-grown despotism, and curricular elements that shine the light on propagandist communication techniques – both verbal and visual – will diminish the manipulative impact of our nation’s merchants of spin and disinformation.

Our curriculum will provide significant support for the development of creative and artistic faculties. While legions of brilliant, Nobel-worthy scientists are critical to our future greatness, a truly bright society cherishes and cultivates excellence across all human endeavors. The Arts and Humanities provide tremendous insights into the truth of our condition, and we should strive to be a nation whose collective right brain is as spectacularly brilliant as its left.

Finally, the simple reality of human society is that not everybody is destined for leadership, scientific accomplishment or artistic immortality. America has always thrived on the back of a dedicated working class, and despite the observation above about the power elite’s lust for a do, don’t think society, we in fact need people who do. Our educational system should account for those who have neither the interest nor aptitude for advanced study, but who are better suited for a career in industry or our surging service economy. These citizens should have access to exceptional vocational and technical training, which will be required if we are to compete with offshore competitors like India and China.

However, these sorts of decisions should be made in a good faith attempt to allow all citizens to seek satisfaction at their best, most productive level. The default goal of the system should be to help up, not hold down.

My administration will have no illusions about being lauded in the short term. However, decades of profoundly counter-productive policies have ushered us to the point where we desperately need leaders willing to be judged by those 50 years down the road instead of eight.

However, we continue to insist on more and more testing so as to assure “accountability,” a cynical, silly misappellation that aggressively refuses to acknowledge the real problems facing our schools. In short, when your teachers are a) drawn from a pool of what’s available at bargain basement wage scale, b) under-resourced, c) saddled with obscene amounts of mind-numbing clerical work, d) placed into overcrowded classrooms that are little more than warehouses, e) forced to teach 21st Century students with a 19th Century educational model, and f) afforded no effective means of addressing disruptive (and often dangerous) students, it is patently stupid to suggest that “accountability” is even possible, and even more ludicrous to suggest that standardized testing (leading to the threat of school closings) will somehow improve education.

The fact that there are people who think this way in positions of authority is perhaps all the evidence we’d ever need to prove that massive, systematic reform is needed.

When talented teachers are provided the ample resources and effective support, accountability isn’t going to be a problem. When learning organizations are tailored to 21st Century skills, tools, requirements and dynamics, we can reasonably expect the failings that “necessitated” over-testing to disappear.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have standards, appropriate measures for evaluation (for students, teachers, administrators and facilities) and processes for assuring the highest functioning of the system (and yes, that includes removing sub-par educators). However, our focus must be on curing the disease, not profiteering off the symptoms.

John Edwards opted for flat honesty:

The new National Intelligence Estimate shows that George Bush and Dick Cheney’s rush to war with Iran is, in fact, a rush to war. The new NIE finds that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that Iran can be dissuaded from pursuing a nuclear weapon through diplomacy. This is exactly the reason that we must avoid radical steps like the Kyl-Lieberman bill declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, which needlessly took us closer to war. And it’s why I have proposed that we pursue a comprehensive diplomatic approach instead.

Obama treads a little lightly for my taste, but his point is nonetheless apt:

By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy. The juxtaposition of this NIE with the president’s suggestion of World War III serves as an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the President any justification to use military force.

Harry Reid is characteristically gutless in a way that only an invertebrate who imagines himself a “statesman” can be:

Today this nation’s senior intelligence analysts concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, directly challenging some of this Administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran. Democratic Committee leaders and I requested this assessment early last year so that the Administration could not rush this Congress and the country to another war based on flawed intelligence. I am very glad that the Administration has finally provided the NIE and I will examine carefully the full classified version in coming days.I hope this Administration reads this report carefully and appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy vis-à-vis Iran. The Administration should begin this process by finally undertaking a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran. President Reagan had the wisdom to conduct diplomacy with America’s adversaries in order to advance U.S. interests. President Bush should follow Reagan’s example.

Chris Dodd engages in a bit of kitten-taming, although he’s right to backhand Congress. It would have been nice had he done so with a spiked gauntlet.

The NIE on Iran contains some very important findings by the intelligence community. Taken together these findings make a strong case for pursuing robust diplomacy to resolve our differences with Iran and for an end to the reckless talk by the Administration and reckless votes by some members of Congress.

Bill Richardson leads with a bitch-slap, which is nice.

This NIE tells us one of two things. Either the Bush-Cheney administration has been willfully misleading the American public on Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities or they are incompetent and were not aware of the consensus view of sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies until yesterday.

The NIE underscores what I have been saying all along. The next President will have to use diplomacy to accomplish our goals and strengthen our interests around the world. I am the only candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has served as an Ambassador. I will be ready on day one to go toe-to-toe with the toughest leaders in the world.

The Clinton camp put Lee Feinstein, its National Security Director, out front for the big reply, and I think his/their statement is pretty revealing. Specifically, I think it casts some light on why so many of us are uncomfortable about the idea of President Hillary Clinton.

First, the statement:

The new declassified key judgments of the Iran NIE expose the latest effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence to pursue its ideological ends. The assessment of the NIE vindicates the policy Senator Clinton will pursue as President: vigorous American-led diplomacy, close international cooperation, and effective economic pressure, with the prospect of carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns. Neither saber rattling nor unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad will stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Senator Clinton has the strength and experience to conduct the kind of vigorous diplomacy needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

If it seems like somebody is inviting you to an all-inclusive cruise on the USS Have-Your-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too, you may be right. Let’s take the statement piece by piece.

The new declassified key judgments of the Iran NIE expose the latest effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence to pursue its ideological ends.

Dead-on. Honest, direct, boot to the nards. This is how a real leader talks. So far, so good.

The assessment of the NIE vindicates the policy Senator Clinton will pursue as President: vigorous American-led diplomacy, close international cooperation, and effective economic pressure, with the prospect of carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns.

Ummm, are we talking about the same Sen. Clinton who eschewed multi-lateral diplomacy and voted to authorize George Bush’s ideologically driven war on Iraq in the first place? The one who still hasn’t apologized for that fuck-up? The one who still hasn’t committed to getting our troops out of that debacle? Or is this a different Sen. Hillary Clinton who’s running for president?

Neither saber rattling nor unconditional meetings with Ahmadinejad will stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Senator Clinton has the strength and experience to conduct the kind of vigorous diplomacy needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Ummm, what?! Note the part I highlighted. What this statement does is try to sneak an arguable statement of fact past the reader in the form of an embedded assumption. Does Iran have “nuclear ambitions”? Maybe. There has been much yarping to that effect from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to be sure, but you have to remember that in the Iranian system he has roughly the stroke of an agency director. The real and ultimate power is Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and he has “issued a fatwa (religious decree) declaring that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are all forbidden in Islam and has said that Iran shall never acquire these weapons…”

So perhaps Iran has nuclear ambitions and perhaps it doesn’t, depending on whether you think their supreme leader has more or less credibility than ours. But in no way, shape or form can you merely assume this, and Feinstein’s rhetorical trickery either points to a disturbing level of ignorance or an even more disturbing level of intellectual dishonesty – neither of which makes me feel better about either him or his candidate.

Further, the statement essentially spanks Dubya for acting erroneously on an assumption about Iran’s intent, and then it turns around three sentences later and makes clear that Clinton herself is making the same assumptions.

Which means, if I have it all straight, that she’s asking us to understand that she agrees with Dubya on everything right up to the point where he invaded.

I could accept that, I guess, if it weren’t for the part where she was directly culpable in helping him invade.

In sum, the Clinton/Feinstein statement is a mealy-mouthed, double-dealing, fork-tongued exercise in Newspeak. Sadly, our culture has grown so acclimated, so numb to this kind of cynical rhetorical chicanery that we barely notice it. It may feel a little off, but how the hell would we get through the day if we tried to stop and parse the underlying truth of every claim that comes across the transom?

I want to say we deserve better, but I believe Disraeli once said that “each People has exactly the Government they deserve.” When candidates behave badly and get elected anyway, the lesson they learn is that bad behavior pays. And since they won, they become the object lesson for other candidates.

I’m Sam Smith and I’m running for president. Please, feel free to quote me on anything I have written here.

Contrary to what some “reformers” seem to believe, the laws of economics apply to teaching. An extremely talented teaching candidate who’s bright enough to earn $80,000 in another field isn’t likely to settle for $25,000 to teach, especially when current policies have turned the job into a thankless slog. There are plenty of incredibly talented people out there who fit this description, but when push comes to shove they’re simply not willing to sacrifice their ability to earn a decent living. So they take the better job for twice the pay, and the teaching job goes to the person who doesn’t have the skills and ability to land that higher paying job.

It happens every day. And it’s time it stopped happening. It’s time we stopped paying lip service, and little else, to the idea that teaching is important and noble. It’s time we started applying the basic principles of economics to the incomparably critical task of preparing for the future.

So when we look at our schools and conclude that we’re not getting the kind of performance we’d like, maybe we should ask what would happen if legions of smart, committed people who want to teach, who think that teaching is the noblest of all professions, who have the capability to change young lives on a daily basis, what if these people don’t have to choose between their passion for cultivating the minds of the next generation and their basic need to earn a living wage. What if they don’t have to spend their own money on supplies for their classrooms? What if the workload makes it possible to have something like a normal family life at the end of the day?

This isn’t intended as a blanket indictment of the abilities of all teachers. Make no mistake – we are currently blessed with many who have the talent to do anything they want, and who nonetheless choose to make the sacrifices required to follow their passion for education. I’m fortunate to know a few of these people, in fact. But the sad truth is that there aren’t enough of them. The pool of talent from which our nation’s schools draw their teachers could and should be stronger – far stronger – and no outstanding teacher I have ever met has told me otherwise. One of the quickest and surest ways to accomplish this critical goal is to improve pay levels across the board.

If elected, I will make teacher compensation one of the first tasks I tackle after taking the oath of office. It won’t be a simple process, and we won’t begin to see the full results for a few years – perhaps not even until after I have left office. We have paid lip service for decades to the nobility of teaching, to how teachers are the real heroes in our society, to the value they represent in our communities and in the lives of tomorrow’s leaders. If I’m elected, our children will spend their days working with the brightest and best teachers our nation has ever seen, and we’ll begin to enjoy the rewards of putting our money where our mouth is.

Some will ask how we’ll pay for this. The EdF1rst initiative will require a significant increase in our total spending on education in the short term. We will not, however, lock ourselves into a “find more money” funding model. Instead, we will adopt a true education first approach. Our teaching and learning initiatives will be funded first – before defense, before social programs, before everything. We will then prioritize the remainder of our spending. This doesn’t imply that other programs aren’t worthy or important, only that we should put first things first. And nothing is more important to Americans than their future.

In the medium and longer term our total spending on salaries might actually decrease. We often make the assumption that we need more teachers, and this is true if we stick with our current teaching models. However, there is exciting evidence suggesting that emerging technology-based teaching models can enable more effective learning with fewer teachers. If these approaches prove broadly feasable, we anticipate that we can recruit the very best teachers, pay them what they’re actually worth, and manage expenditures all at the same time.

Finally, the tendency to think of teaching in cost terms ends the day I’m sworn in. Done properly, education isn’t a cost, it’s an investment that pays itself off dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times over when viewed in the long term. A dollar spent today that generates a million dollars in 20 years simply isn’t a cost, and we’re through viewing our children as a drain on our national resources. They are national resources, and will henceforth be treated that way.

A critical element of the EdF1rst restructuration will involve shifting of administrative functions (and their resource expenditures) from central offices to the schools and an attendant transfer of autonomy from bureaucratic centers to teachers. Central administrations will be much smaller under the EdF1rst plan, and one manifestation will be fewer administrative managers at the central office and more para-teaching personnel serving the daily needs of teachers in the schools.

This reorganization is essential if we’re to truly address the diseases afflicting public education in America. At present, critics on “both” sides of the debate point to various symptoms (which are certainly real) and offer solutions that amount to sticking a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. A variety of factors – ideological investment and self-serving financial interests being the two worst – prevent them from seeing through to the underlying root causes giving rise to the symptoms they’re troubled by (or are pretending to be troubled by).

For instance, some critics of my plan, when they hear the words “teacher salaries,” reflexively leap to the argument that we already spend a huge sum of money per student. This is correct (sort of) so far as it goes. But they then leap to precisely the wrong conclusion – “you can’t fix education by throwing money at it.” The irony in these discussions is that these critics will often, in the next breath, explain that bureaucratic bloat is undermining public education. Which seems to suggest that they can’t distinguish between spending too much and spending unwisely. While the two often go hand-in-hand, they’re hardly the same thing.

So let’s be clear – success is a function of a) investing sufficient resources and b) investing those resources in the right places. At present, public education wastes ridiculous amounts of money on administrativa. Yes, education systems need good administrators, but centralized organizational structures tend to suck money out of the classroom and into the bureaucracy.

As noted above, the EducationF1rst initiative will transfer significant administrative authority to education faculty. Especially with respect to curricular issues, autonomy will be shifted from central offices to the teachers responsible for the day-to-day life of their schools. Additionally, teachers currently waste tremendous amounts of time on clerical work when their skills should be more directly focused on the students. The addition of para-educators, who manage clerical functions and perform research and preparation work for teachers, will provide a far more effective and cost-efficient model for the conduct of daily operations in our schools.

EdF1rst will realign educational appropriation, shifting significant funding from administration into direct teaching programs. Obviously how much gets shifted and in what way will vary. At present we can find significant variations from state to state and district to district, and EdF1rst explicitly rejects the idea that one size fits all. However, as standards and best practices evolve and as our classrooms are populated with increasingly qualified teaching professionals, we will insist on locally sensitive policies that fund the classroom first.

For example: a dollar spent on education is also a dollar spent on the looming energy crisis. Teaching cultivates the minds that will one day develop the sustainable, environmentally friendly fuel resources we need to assure the growth of our economy and our independence from unstable foreign suppliers.

A dollar spent on education is a dollar spent on preventing and curing disease, as we develop ever greater knowledge about the causes and treatment of illness and on the steps we can take to live longer, healthier, more productive lives.

It’s a dollar spent developing the diplomatic skills we need to peacefully navigate our increasingly dangerous world. A dollar developing the military strategy and technical capability required to the integrity of our national interests. A dollar spent safeguarding the environment for future generations. Exploring the mysteries of the solar system and the universe beyond.

A dollar spent on education is a dollar spent shaping the political and economic genius required to innovate solutions to complex problems like immigration. Cultivating the entrepreneurial foundation for new industries and revitalization in existing ones, assuring that we have ample vocational opportunities here at home. It’s a dollar spent creating jobs in America so global corporations aren’t tempted to offshore employment to places like India and China.

It’s a dollar spent sparking the next golden age of American art and culture. Literature, dance, music, visual arts – and on the creation of new art forms that feed the spirit and utilize the new technologies of the brightest society on Earth.

Best of all, a dollar spent on teaching is a dollar spent on learning innovation. The more we learn, the more we understand how to learn, and as we discover new and better ways to educate, we ensure that our collective learning curve will be ever steeper, providing ever greater rewards.

In other words, when you devote resources to education, you’re not spending, you’re investing. The resources you allocate today will generate significant, even massive returns in the future. In a generation we will be smarter, safer, and healthier, and our world will hopefully be a more peaceful one, ripe with opportunity and possibility. Our children and grandchildren will look back in gratitude for the commitment we made to their big picture and the patience with which we stayed the course in the only battle that really matters.

There is nothing we cannot learn, and no problem that learning cannot solve, if only we’re smart enough and brave enough to bet our futures on the American mind. After all, it was our intelligence that propelled us to our greatest moments in the past.

Why should tomorrow promise less than yesterday?

In January I launched Dr. Slammy in 2008, my doomed campaign for president. Then a few months later, forgetting that there are only 24 hours in a day, I got myself embroiled in this Scholars & Rogues project. Something had to give, and as a result I let the DS08 initiative slide.

As the presidential campaign has hotted up, though, it’s become clearer and clearer that America needs a candidate who’s willing to approach our problems with some genuinely fresh perspective. Candidates from both major parties are having a hard time differentiating themselves, and for good reason: there’s just not much difference between them.

So, since I think the ideas represented by DS08 are important, and since I don’t have time to sustain two separate blog efforts, I’m hereby making S&R home base for all future DS08 activities. (This doesn’t mean that my fellow Scrogues necessarily endorse this silliness – merely that they haven’t so far found any way of putting a stop to it.)

For those of you new to DS08, let me summarize my philosophy: we have no problems that we cannot solve through education. Later today I’ll be posting the campaign’s guiding Statement of Principle, and in the coming days and weeks I’ll be posting the platform a section at a time. I invite your feedback and ideas, as I see this campaign as a collaborative process. The platform will be fluid and subject to revision as new wisdom emerges, and I encourage you to spread the word, inviting others you know into the conversation.

We won’t agree on every plank – that’s perhaps the only guarantee we have in this initiative. But if we pledge to work together in good faith, I feel certain that we will evolve a campaign that we can all commit to, because the sum of our shared interests will far outweigh our differences on tactical details.

Join with me as we work to shape the American agenda in ways that place the benefits to our culture, our nation and our children ahead of the self-serving, cynical interests that have ushered us to our current sad (and worsening) state.