Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [39]
By the time Paige was stunning senators at his confirmation hearing with a magnificently vapid opening statement and his inability to answer in depth any question about education, his successor as Houston superintendent of schools, Kaye Stripling, was already hard at work cleaning up the mess Paige had left behind. But that’s another story. Bush nominates figureheads for domestic-policy positions. If you don’t believe this, try to write a book about the influence labor secretary Elaine Chao has had on labor policy, or EPA director Christine Todd Whitman on environmental policy, or education secretary Paige on education policy. Paul O’Neill got serious about fiscal policy and was sent packing. Larry Lindsay took a hard look at the cost of going to war in Iraq, came up with $200 billion, and got sacked.
Kress is a devout education-policy reformer and policy wonk, who according to one congressional staffer “exudes so much confidence that he sometimes comes across as arrogant.” He has mastered the minutiae of public-education policy. His commitment to education reform is sincere and heartfelt. “Our African-American kids in the fourth grade are doing better in math than African-American kids anywhere in the country,” Kress said. “In fact they are doing better than white kids in seven states. That doesn’t sound as good as it ought to. But it’s better than it ever was in American history. Black kids doing better than white kids.” Kress is a skilled negotiator who worked legislators on the congressional committees revising and marking up the public-ed bill. “He knew the issues and spent a lot of time with members from both parties,” said a Kennedy aide. Kress had served on the board of one of the most challenging school districts in Texas, where he was far more engaged with policy than most trustees. He’s also slicker than greased owl shit. “He was the guy with the plan in his briefcase,” said a public-ed lobbyist.
Even so, it’s nothing short of remarkable that they pulled it off.
Bush got off to a bad start on education reform when he excluded Ted Kennedy from a meeting of congressional education leaders in Austin before the inauguration. “Somebody on his staff must have thought it would be cute not to invite Kennedy,” said a Senate staffer. Then he ignored Senate Health and Education chair Jim Jeffords because he was a Republican who didn’t pass Karl Rove’s ideological litmus test. Then Bush and Rove appointed the memorably unremarkable secretary of education.
The president’s odds of passing an education-reform bill improved when his party lost control of the Senate. When Rove’s arrogance drove Jeffords out of the party, Ted Kennedy became chair of Health and Education. “When Kennedy took over, we were dealing with a consummate pol and a great staff,” a Bush administration official told The Washington Post.
Bush and Rove began to get a sense of how the Senate worked, and after having stiffed Kennedy, the president invited him to the White House to discuss education. “The president was very familiar with education issues,” said a Kennedy staffer, who went on to repeat something that has appeared in numerous press reports. Bush told Kennedy that reform required “disaggregation”—reporting test scores by racial, economic, and ethnic subgroups. Kennedy was impressed by the president’s familiarity with the technical language of education. (As often happens with Bush, he benefits from the lowest of expectations.) Kennedy was further encouraged by Bush’s promise to make sure “the neediest children get the benefit of these reforms.” The senator sensed that he and the president shared some “common ground on education.”
If Kennedy was sold on Bush, Bush was sold on Kennedy. The senator won the president over early on by passing up the opportunity to take a public swipe at him after their initial White House meeting. “When they were walking out, the president told Senator Kennedy. ‘There are going to be a lot of reporters