Obama vs. Bush: Speech to School Kids Controversy, Dems Attacked & Investigated Bush
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on September 8, 2009
Pres. George H. W. Bush was attacked and investigated by Democrats following his speech to school children
Speech Day.
It’s September 8, the day scheduled for Pres. Obama’s much talked-about, controversial televised speech to school kids across the nation. From the FINALLY available-for-review speech (OK, the link to the left is a spoof… just making sure you were paying attention), Pres. Obama’s address is pretty bland and standard, with the expected platitudes and motivational axioms. The speech likely was rewritten umpteen times over the past week as a result of the national outcry from parents, education directors and leaders, and Republican politicians.
But this critical outcry is a mere whimper compared to what Democrats did to Pres. George H. W. Bush.
From Byron York’s Washington Examiner article, When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings:
The controversy over President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president’s school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president’s political benefit. “The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props,” the Post reported.
The Democrats struck with a vengeance.
With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students,” said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. “And the president should be doing more about education than saying, ‘Lights, camera, action.’”
Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush’s appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. “The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC,” Ford began. “As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event.”
Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. “The speech itself and the use of the department’s funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal,” the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. “The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda.”
But it didn’t stop there.
That didn’t stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it “cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers’ money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. — while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters.”
Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush’s speech itself, like Obama’s today, was entirely unremarkable. “Block out the kids who think it’s not cool to be smart,” the president told students. “If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they’re stuck in a dead end job. Don’t let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.
How quickly liberals forget the facts of the past and try to rewrite history, claiming that “no one” ever fussed about Bush.
As Michelle Malkin succinctly summarized, it was never about Obama’s speech itself. It was its anticipated subtext based on all the radical activism brewing and stewing in Washington these days.
UPDATE: Thank you to a couple of blogging compadres who noticed that I had inserted the wrong Bush photo with this post. It was of George Junior and should have been George Senior, which it now is. And to a handful of liberal trolls who ripped me apart for the accidental error, thanks for reading!
More related links:
Politico: Right blasts Obama speech to students
GayPatriot: Had Rightosphere Not Raised such a Ruckus Would Obama’s Speech to Schoolkids have been so unobjectionable?
Doug TenNapel, Big Hollywood: Found Art: Dear Leader Addresses the Children
Sister Toldjah: That was then, this is now – how Democrats treated GHWB’s speech to schoolkids and Creeptastic: Elementary school shows Obama “pledge” video to students
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: Mr. President Goes Back to School: A Controversial Issue?
Michelle Malkin: Why parents don’t trust the Educator-in-Chief and his comrades and I repeat: It’s not the speech, it’s the subtext and “I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama” and Operation “Hall Pass on That” and Whitewashing the Obama education speech guides and Obama’s classroom campaign: No junior lobbyist left behind and Meet Obama’s newest Census collectors: Your kids!
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Gov. Tim Pawlenty Speaks Out Against Obama’s Sept. 8 Televised School Address, Many Schools Say They “Opt Out” and Obama Peeved, So Escalates Media Attacks vs. “Love Is in the Air” (video): UPDATE – School Propaganda on Sept. 8, “I Pledge to Give Service to Obama”
National Review Online: Krauthammer’s Take
Washington Post, Post Politics: Obama’s School Address, Politicians and Profanity, More
Watcher of Weasels: September 8th – National Keep Your Kids Home From School Day, Avoid Obama Propaganda School Plan
Ztower: Carroll County Times unhappy with the “far right.”
The Christian Science Monitor: Obama school speech suddenly a prickly topic for educators
The Political Fish: Gibbs: Opponents of Prez starting “food fight”
The Underground Conservative: The Speech
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: Obama Youth – Obama to indoctrinate kids on Sep 8
Goodtimepolitics: Barack Obama’s speech to school kids draws fire
Mama Winger’s Kitchen Table: Obama: No Child Propaganda Left Behind
Traction Control: Letter to the Principal, My Child’s September 8 Absence
Jim Geraghty, National Review Online: Department of Education Deletes Line About How Schoolkids Can Help Obama
Right Soup: Obama Wants Your Kid In His Cult
This Ain’t Hell, But you can see it from here: I pledge?
HillBuzz: KEEP PUSHING BACK, PEOPLE. WHITE HOUSE ON THE ROPES OVER SCHOOL INDOCTRINATION PLAN
Tarpon’s Swamp: Indoctrination of School Kids
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