The Compassionate Conservative

George Bush ran as a compassionate conservative - which was one of those ideas that sounded good to some people, like an oxymoron to others and goofy to still others. As I look at his first seven and a quarter years I am struck by a couple of things. First, if you substitute the word activist for compassionate, I think it is more accurate.

Let me offer one proof of that in an area that I spend a lot of time in. In the K-12 arena Mr. Bush caused a new expanded role for the federal government in No Child Left Behind. He argued that the push for uniform standards was appropriate. The evidence from the first few years of NCLB is that while the fed role increased and while there was a lot of jabbering about how this was going to increase performance - the substantive results are more hype than real.

At the higher education level Mr. Bush's administration spent about five years ignoring any of the key issues. He then asked his Secretary of Education to take on the issue of performance in those institutions. Secretary Spellings did little but talk except in two areas. First, she attempted (and although she was partially unsuccessful the long term trend is going in the wrong direction) to do a federal takeover of the accrediting function. In the end, while the reauthorization did not go as far as the Secretary thought it should, the decentralized model of American higher education is certainly under challenge. In the area of student loans, the administration argued for a dual track (federally provided direct loans and those facilitated through banks). The competition was good but the what looks to be happening, in part because of a partial reconciliation of spending before the actual adoption of the reauthorization, is that the hand of the direct loan supporters (read a program completely run by the federal government) seems more likely. Had Spellings and Bush been more adroit, they would have recognized the problems with the FFEL program and then proposed real alternatives to reduce costs and at the same time offer a better program. Of the three remaining presidential candidates - both democrats are committed to federalizing the loan program and McCain has not yet weighed in on the issue.

For my taste, that might mean the we should be a bit more wary about new juxtapositions of political terms.