Thursday, October 16, 2008

What Silent Cal Can Tell Us about a President Obama

Calvin Coolidge had the nickname Silent Cal.  Once, at a dinner party, a woman who had been seated next to the President said, “they bet me that mean I couldn’t get you to say three words all evening.” Coolidge answered, “You lose.”

His personality fit with his conception of how to do the job.  “People come into your office to ask you for things. Usually these are things they shouldn’t have, but if you just sit there long enough without saying anything they’ll usually just get up and leave.”

Coolidge’s little story draws our attention to a fact about the presidency: it mostly involves giving people money. And so, in asking whether or not some would be a good president, a reasonable thing to examine would be what kind of people they’ve given money to, especially other people’s money.

This is why it is fortunate that the Annenberg foundation has finally consented to release the records of the time it was run by Senator Obama.  After all, the senator has an unusually short political career for a presidential candidate, and has been unusually reluctant to release records that other politicians make public as a matter of course: his legislative records, college transcripts, etc..

Obama was the founding Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Grant, from 1995- 1999.  The Annenberg foundation gave $50 million – an amount which later grew to some $160 million through other contributions – to the Chicago organization to improve elementary education in Chicago.  Obama’s job was to decide who got the Annenberg foundation’s money.  It was his first big job and his first and only executive position.  And yet, Senator Obama has shown little interest in talking about this part of his resume.

Part of the reason may be that according to their own audits the organization’s own internal reports their efforts did not achieve much: students at schools that received the challenge Grant showed no statistically significant improvement.  Fortunately for Mr. Obama he was not the mayor of a small town where going through $160 million without anything to show for it might be something of a problem.

Perhaps part of the reason Mr. Obama’s efforts produced so little in the way of educational achievement was that the people he Obama said yes to were more interested in radical politics than reading and math.  One of the groups that Obama decided to get money was one run by William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground member.  Ayres’ group sought to inspire grade school children to recognize the American system as a repressive tool of capitalism and empower them to resist. 

Obama’s supporters counter that it is ridiculous to think that the Annenberg Foundation, created by a conservative Reagan Administration member, would be supporting radical causes, but that is precisely the point.  Ambassador Annenberg probably did not expect the money he put up to improve reading and math scores be used for radical indoctrination. 

Senator Obama’s supporters are indignant about these questions, claiming it is guilt by association.  But “association” is a rather broad term. It can cover everything from a guy who just happens to live in your neighborhood to a guy you to whom you entrusted the education of other people’s children.  That one happens to be on a board with someone we don’t like tells us nothing; that one decides to give money to him tells us quite a lot.  The amount of money spent on education may not shift wildly with whoever is President, but the way in which that money is spent often does.  Obama has portrayed himself as a moderate, but the list of people and organizations to whom he has directed substantial resources—Reverend Wright, ACORN, Bill Ayers—suggests something else. 

Senator McCain has the same problem in the form of his involvement in the Keating five scandal.  But whatever one thinks of Senator McCain’s answers to these questions he has never suggested that people don’t have a right to ask them.  Senator Obama stands poised to become the first President since Jimmy Carter to have a majority of his own party in the House and a filibuster proof margin in the Senate.  We are, in effect, handing over to him 100,000 Annenberg challenge grants.  If we don’t like the people to whom he has given other people’s money, we may not like how he spends ours. 

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