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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Bipartisan Ghost

We all know that George W. Bush’s promises in 2000 to become a “uniter, not a divider” have been broken over and over again. And moreover, his Texas-based claims of interest in bipartisanship have been limited to “my way or the highway” inducements to Democratic surrender.
The one, and only one, truly bipartisan initiative Bush engaged in was the “No Child Left Behind” initiative, based largely on prior moderate Democratic proposals, and relying heavily on support from Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller.
NCLB has been steadily bleeding support from local-control Republicans and anti-testing Democrats, and from all sorts of folks unhappy with the administration’s serial refusals to keep its funding promises.
Today’s WaPo has a solid summary by Peter Baker about the current landscape of support for and opposiition to NCLB. Given this administration’s history, the fact that any progressive Democrats are willing to renew support for NCLB is a good indication that they are looking beyond the doomed Bush presidency, and are trying to salvage a few things from the wreakage.

One comment on “Bipartisan Ghost

  1. noexpert on

    Tabling it for now, but not giving up on renewing it later in better form (more realistic goals based on a growth model) sounds exactly right to me. As a teacher in a school with high population of ELL / immigrant students and a low passing rate, I’ve experienced many of the problems with it in its current form first hand.

    Reply

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