By WALTER R. MEARS, AP Special Correspondent Walter R. Mears, Ap Special
Correspondent – Wed Sep 9, 3:15 am ET
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – There may be a lesson plan for grown-ups in the contrived
controversy about Barack Obama's
back-to-school pep talk to students. It would be to do your homework, just as
the president told the pupils.
That way, the people who protested the Obama speech before they knew what was
in it would have realized there is
nothing unusual about a president appearing at a public school as the classroom
year begins. The previous three
Republicans have and there wasn't any stir, aside from some Democratic
nitpicking about White House expenses,
proving that neither party has a monopoly on pettiness. It was routine. As, in
the end, Obama's Tuesday talk was.
Then again, many people doing the complaining, and certainly the broadcast
talkers and anti-Obama bloggers who
fomented the whole business, were not looking for information or for reasons
not to make a fuss. They wanted one,
and got it.
At least some of the complainants presumably took advantage of the White
House's early release of Obama's text,
24 hours in advance, so they could read what he was going to say and make sure
it wasn't offensive.
And one formerly outraged Republican, Florida state GOP chairman Jim Greer, who
had said the president was
trying to promote socialist ideology, relented after reading the text and said
it was appropriate. Although
he also was quoted as wondering whether Obama would really give the same speech.
Of course he did, urging students in his televised talk at an Arlington, Va.,
high school to study, work
hard and stick to it, all the things a president would be expected to say in
such a setting.
"I expect you to get serious this year," the president said. "I expect you to
put your best effort into
everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.
"So don't let us down — don't let your family or your country or yourself down.
Make us all proud. I know
you can do it."
There was no count of his student audience; millions, presumably, despite the
schools and school districts
that blacked out the president because of parent protests, which were most
vehement in Republican areas.
It was an invented and inflated controversy in which the administration
provided its foes an easy target by
issuing a proposed lesson plan in which students would have been asked to help
the president meet his goals.
That was revised to ask pupils to write letters about their own goals and how
they would try to achieve them.
There were no Republican complaints in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush
spoke at a Washington, D.C., school
and told the students, "Write me a letter — I'm serious about this one — write
me a letter about ways you can
help us achieve our goals."
Nor did Republicans claim that Ronald Reagan was trying to create a cult of
personality, as some did this time,
when he spoke to students at the White House in 1988, near the end of his
second term. Answering questions,
Reagan boasted of economic progress and a patriotic revival under his
administration. He also said he opposed
rigid gun controls or handgun bans.
More politics there than in Obama's school session. At a meeting with students
before his speech, the president
did tell a questioning youth that he favors universal health insurance and
thinks it can be done. But he never
mentioned his policy agenda in his speech.
President George W. Bush was at a Sarasota, Fla., school reading to pupils on
Sept. 11, 2001. He was to have
delivered a back-to-school talk there, but never did. The terrorist attacks on
New York City and Washington
intervened.
Until now presidential school speeches hadn't been treated as anything out of
the ordinary.. Obama's wasn't
either, but right-wing activists saw an opportunity to hassle him and to stir
up people who don't like the
president by inventing an issue.
This wasn't really about the propriety of a president speaking at a school or
about what he might say that
parents claimed they had to guard their kids against. It was about opposing
Obama. There's nothing wrong
with opposition. That's the way politics works.
But the underlying tone of the most vehement critics goes past the traditions
of politics to the idea that
schoolchildren shouldn't be listening to this guy because he shouldn't be
president.
The office, whoever the man in the White House, always has commanded respect.
That is eroding in the era
of nonstop talk shows and angry blogs.
It has been an American tradition for losing candidates in presidential
elections to urge their
followers to respect the outcome, to say that the winner is their president,
too. Episodes like
the school speech flap say something different.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Walter R. Mears covered government and politics for The
Associated Press for more than 45 years.
He is retired now and lives in Chapel Hill, N.C
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