The Great Debate

Can Romney put foreign policy in play?

This piece was updated after GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s major foreign policy address on Monday. It reflects Romney’s remarks.

In the first foreign policy speech following his momentum-gaining debate against President Barack Obama, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney expanded on his vision of an “American century,” a view he tied to the legacy of leaders like General George Marshall as he outlined a muscular, moral U.S. foreign policy with American exceptionalism at its core.

Romney aimed to distinguish his world view from the president’s, as he has in far-lower-profile foreign policy speeches, promising to “change course” in the Middle East by helping to provide arms to Syrian rebels and talking and acting even tougher on Iran.

“It is the responsibility of our president,” Romney said Monday at the Virginia Military Institute, “to use America’s great power to shape history – not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events. Unfortunately, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama.”

Romney wove together a constellation of tumultuous events in the Middle East that he said has left “the risk of conflict in the region” higher “now than when the president took office.”

And he promised what amounted to a middle ground between President George W. Bush’s activist “freedom agenda” and the pragmatic and downsized ambitions of an America exhausted and depleted by two wars in one decade.

Although this election will ultimately be decided on economic terrain, the challenger could use upheaval in the Middle East to build on momentum gained from his strong debate performance. In his first foreign policy speech since the debate Romney aimed to distinguish his world view from the president’s, promising to provide arms to Syrian rebels and talking and acting even tougher on Iran. Join Discussion

The GOP and voter anger

President Barack Obama’s lackluster, let’s-work-together performance in Wednesday night’s presidential debate stoked the fears of his liberal backers that Democrats simply won’t fight for them the way Republicans relentlessly battle for their wealthier, aging, corporate constituents.

After four years of Republican intransigence – even when Democrats have championed Republican ideas – the Democratic left insists that the White House hasn’t grasped that the 2012 campaign is not about policy. So far, Republicans are proving more adept at speaking, in both coded and direct terms, to Americans’ stark demographic and psychological divisions.

That Republican nominee Mitt Romney stood before the nation and all but disowned the tax-cut, Medicare, health policy and other GOP doctrines he had campaigned on for months is likely to matter little to his backers. The last three Republican presidents, as MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes pointed out, also campaigned on promises of economic growth, deficit reduction and tax relief – and all left behind a faltering economy and ballooned deficits. What they reliably delivered was tax cuts benefiting the wealthy.

This campaign showcases the GOP’s ability to feed the anger of a large chunk of aging white Americans whose presumption of “exceptionalism” in citizenship and nationality is now being challenged by claims of equality for younger, multiracial, immigrant and “non-traditional” Americans – as represented by Obama himself.

The president’s continued invocation of “Republicans and Democrats working together” demonstrates the Democrats’ self-destructive course. Post-2008 Republicans, in both congressional votes and campaign statements, have made it clear that their goal is to destroy not just this presidency, but any concept of a society shared among a diverse, multicultural citizenry.

Republicans’ message is keyed to “us” real Americans versus “them” imposters. Republicans present their aging, overwhelmingly white, religiously conservative, more affluent constituencies as economically triumphant, morally truer Americans. They are clearly entitled to more private and public beneficence – though they owe none of their success to this.

President Obama’s lackluster, let’s-work-together performance in Wednesday night’s presidential debate stoked the fears of his liberal backers that Democrats simply won’t fight for them the way Republicans relentlessly battle for their wealthier, aging, corporate -- and resentful -- constituents. Join Discussion

Romney somersaults on to the middle ground

Do you recall just seven months ago when Romney campaign aide Eric Fehrnstrom let slip that having won the Republican primaries, his candidate would “shake it up and restart it all over again” as if wiping clean an Etch-a-Sketch screen? Romney did just that last night. From a standing start Romney executed a perfect backward somersault, landing with both feet slap-bang in front of a bemused president, who appeared quite taken aback that his rival should plant his feet firmly in the middle ground where elections are won and lost.

Take Romney’s view of regulating the market. In his personal manifesto No Apology, Romney trod a careful path, suggesting that, like his primary opponents who unwaveringly support the untrammeled free market, he was wary of overregulating business. “Excessive regulation slows the creation of new businesses and the expansion of existing businesses,” he wrote. On his website, he promises to “act swiftly to tear down the vast edifice of regulations the Obama administration has imposed on the economy.”

But in Denver last night, Romney changed his tune, suggesting that he had always been in favor of regulation, whatever impression he may have given in the past. “Regulation is essential,” he declared. “You can’t have a free market work if you don’t have regulation … Every free economy has good regulation.”

Last August, Romney told a roomful of Wall Streeters: “The extent of regulation in the banking industry has become extraordinarily burdensome following Dodd-Frank,” and said, “I’d like to repeal Dodd-Frank,” a carefully worded half-promise to remove regulations imposed on Wall Street in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse. Last night he amended his pledge. “There’s some parts of the Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world,” he said, and that rather than repeal it outright, he would “repeal it and replace it” with similar curbs on reckless business practices. Paul Ryan, who cites as an inspiration Ayn Rand, who thought all constraints on business were next to communism, must have been a little surprised at Romney’s brazen about-face.

Romney also wriggled on cutting taxes for the rich. In the primary debate in Rochester, Michigan, in November 2011, he was adamant he wanted to retain the Bush tax cuts, including tax breaks for the super-wealthy. Explaining that he didn’t want to raise taxes on anyone in the middle of a recession, he said: “That’s one of the reasons why we fought so hard to make sure the Bush tax cuts weren’t taken away by President Obama.” It was a refrain he had been repeating since running against John McCain in 2008. At a primary debate in Boca Raton in January 2008, he announced: “I support the Bush tax cuts … One way to [create more jobs] is by holding down taxes and making those tax cuts permanent.”

Last night there was no mention of the Bush tax cuts – indeed, no mention of George W. Bush at all, by Romney. “I do want to reduce the burden being paid by middle-income Americans,” Romney said. “And I – and to do that that also means that I cannot reduce the burden paid by high-income Americans,” a sure indication that Romney’s pollsters have found that loading taxes on the rich is popular.

In a debate ostensibly about economic policy, there was no mention of either John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas about stimulating the economy continue to guide Obama’s Treasury team, or Friedrich Hayek, another Ryan hero and the champion of pro-austerity “Austrian economics.” But though he dare not speak his name, Romney’s proposal last night for reducing the deficit was pure Keynes: Don’t cut too much too soon to tip the economy back into recession, but put everyone back to work so they can afford to pay taxes. Or, as he put it: “There are three ways that you can cut a deficit. One, of course, is to raise taxes. Number two is to cut spending. And number three is to grow the economy, because if more people work in a growing economy they’re paying taxes and you can get the job done that way.” By backing the third option, Romney rejected the tough-love policies urged on him by his primary rivals and instead has prioritized growing the economy.

From a standing start Romney executed a perfect backward somersault, landing with both feet slap-bang in front of a bemused president, who appeared quite taken aback that his rival should plant his feet firmly in the middle ground where elections are won and lost. Join Discussion

It’s not the economy, stupid!

Tonight’s debate could be the most negative presidential debate ever. That’s because the best thing each candidate has going for him is negative opinion of the other guy.

This election was supposed to be a referendum on President Barack Obama. That’s what usually happens when an incumbent is running for re-election. Sometimes the incumbent is popular enough to win re-election (Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996). Sometimes he’s not (Jimmy Carter in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1992).

The biggest single factor determining the incumbent’s popularity is the economy: good in 1984 and 1996, terrible in 1980 and 1992. By that standard, Obama should be in deep trouble. That’s the big surprise this year. He’s not.

If Obama were running against himself this year, he would lose. But he’s running against Mitt Romney – and that is a race he can win.

He can win because Democrats have managed to frame the election as a choice – not a referendum. It’s not just “keep Obama or fire him”. It’s “keep Obama or hire Romney”. And the simple fact is, most voters don’t want to hire Romney.

The Pew poll reports that “Romney is the only presidential candidate over the past seven election cycles [since at least 1988] to be viewed more unfavorably than favorably” by voters. Even losers like Michael Dukakis (1988), George H.W. Bush (1992), Bob Dole (1996) and John Kerry (2004) had a positive image. Not Romney.

Usually the economy drives the political fortunes of the candidates, but this year things are strangely backwards. Obama's growing popularity is boosting economic confidence despite what the objective indicators show. Join Discussion

The ‘Hollywood Test’ for president

If you think of the current presidential campaign as a movie, the economy, by all rights, should have pre-empted most of the drama and handed the lead role to the lantern-jawed financier. The movie would have told of a decent man, so unflappable that he never broke a sweat, who tried his best but couldn’t work his will on the world and make things right. Into that void, walked Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who vowed that he had the experience and strength to turn things around.

Here was a simple plot pitting weakness against strength, a well-meaning amateur against a tough-minded business titan – essentially, the professor against the industrialist.

But that’s not the way it seems to be turning out. And the reason why may have as much to do with movies as politics. We love the idea of civic responsibility, of an informed citizenry boning up on the issues. But what we really do when we vote nowadays is cast our preference for the candidate who proposes the better movie – who seems to make the better protagonist in the national drama.

We impose “the Hollywood Test.” And Romney, despite his sturdy good looks and the ready-made script, doesn’t seem to be passing right now.

We all know that politics has become another branch of popular culture and politicians can get the same media treatment as celebrities. But this may be the least of the transformations that popular culture has wreaked on political culture. All of us, conditioned by the inundation of entertainment in our lives, have come to see elections as another entertainment, and we ask our politicians to serve the function that stars serve in their movies – to provide us with the vicarious reassurance that problems are not intractable and everything will work out in the end.

Politics, then, isn’t about policy. It is about personae – about being a star. And that is where politics and entertainment really converge.

The whole point of elections – which have become like movies – is to make us decide which candidate is the protagonist and which the antagonist. President Obama has managed to rewrite the script, with Romney portrayed as a cold, ruthless antagonist. No wonder the challenger is trailing in the polls. Join Discussion

Tax reform does not guarantee growth

One of the few thin­gs that President Obama and Mitt Romney are likely to agree on when they debate next week is the need for tax reform. Both candidates have backed streamlining America’s crazy-quilt tax code, and both have said that reforms could boost economic growth. Meanwhile, two key congressional committees held a rare bipartisan hearing last week – with lawmakers from both parties saying that tax reform is needed to rev up the economy.

Yet exactly how and why tax reform would spur growth is far from clear. Many proponents of reform, including Romney, want to lower tax rates while retaining the same level of revenue. But doing that means reducing major individual tax breaks that subsidize key sectors of the economy – including housing and healthcare. Long term, there are good arguments for whacking such subsidies, which tilt heavily in favor of affluent households and distort our economy. But curbing these freebies doesn’t offer a short-term economic fix and, in fact, could hurt growth.

Let’s start with the best-known big tax break – the mortgage interest deduction, which will cost the U.S. Treasury about $100 billion next year, according to the Congressional Research Service. Shrinking this loophole is a good idea in principle, since it primarily benefits more affluent households who have big mortgages and itemize their taxes, but it would be a blow to a housing sector that is still struggling. Smaller subsidies for home buyers would mean weaker sales and less new construction and would keep home values depressed – not an outcome that anyone wants to see right now. Among other things, such reform could be another severe blow to construction workers, who now have the highest unemployment rate of any group.

Or consider the biggest tax expenditure of all – the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance. Thanks to this deduction, which clocks in at over $150 billion annually, the IRS doesn’t count the value of health benefits that workers get from their employers as compensation – thus providing the health sector with tens of millions of subsidized customers. This break is also heavily tilted toward the affluent, who receive better health benefits, and is a ripe target for reform – just not right now. The healthcare sector is one of the few bright spots in the economy, accounting for many of the new jobs created in recent months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Whoever is inaugurated in January won’t want to mess with this job growth.

The story is the same for most other big tax breaks. Close any loophole and somebody is going to take a hit. Even scrapping some of the most indefensible corporate tax breaks – like subsidies for energy companies – could have adverse near-term effects. Oil and gas exploration is creating a lot of jobs right now, with unemployment a mere 3 percent in the fracking boom state of North Dakota. Ending tax giveaways to this profitable industry probably won’t cost jobs – but it’s hard to imagine that any president, including Obama, really wants to test that hypothesis right now.

While the concrete costs of closing tax loopholes are easy to see, the benefits of lower rates are more speculative. Consumers and employers have been holding back even though tax rates are at a 60-year low. It’s hard to see why even lower rates would lead to more hiring or spending, as Romney’s economic blueprint assumes.

President Obama, Mitt Romney and lawmakers from both parties have said streamlining America’s crazy-quilt tax code could rev up the economy. But reducing individual tax breaks that subsidize key sectors of the economy like housing and healthcare could hurt growth right now. Join Discussion

Romney is powerless against Murdoch’s lash

Mitt Romney must be wondering where it all went wrong. With the president presiding over a jobless, barely perceptible recovery, with most Americans thinking Obama is on the wrong track, and with his healthcare legislation widely derided, the Republican champion should be coasting by now. Yet Romney has been languishing in the head-to-head polls for almost a year, and prominent conservative commentators are complaining.

It is rare to hear such a concerted chorus of disapproval, not least with the election just six weeks away. Rupert Murdoch, at least, can say to Romney, “I told you so!” In July, he warned on Twitter: “Tough O Chicago pros will be hard to beat unless he drops old friends from team and hires some real pros. Doubtful.” It was advice Romney could afford neither to accept nor refuse. To fire his staff at the behest of the media boss who controls the nation’s most unforgiving conservative news outlets would be to follow successive weak British leaders who bent to  Murdoch’s will, with tragic results. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, to name just three prime ministers, are still trying to rid themselves of the taint.

So Romney did nothing. Better, perhaps, to die as a lion than live as a sheep. Romney is hardly the sort of man Murdoch admires. He is too smooth, too well turned out, too prissy, too financially independent to pay homage to the likes of Murdoch. Romney has about him many of the characteristics Murdoch despises in what he calls the “old toffs” in England who refused to kowtow to the publisher of “family” tabloids with expletives on the cover and bare breasts inside.

Over the summer, Murdoch kept up the pressure through cryptic Tweets. When Romney picked Ryan as his veep, Murdoch conceded: “Romney re-energised and speaking better.” During the Republican convention the Ozzie oracle added a hint of menace: “Tide turning? Romney must hit ball out of park next week. Great manager proven, now we must hear great vision for future. Must inspire.”

Romney’s oratory in Tampa proved disappointing. After Murdoch declared Ryan’s speech “utterly brilliant,” his verdict was: “Conventions mixed but net big win for democrats. Michelle O and Clinton the big stars.” In the Romney camp, the absence of praise from the man who owns the mainstream conservative commentariat must have sent a chill down the spine. Perhaps Romney should have treated with Murdoch after all. By early September, the News Corp boss was clear: “To win Romney must open big tent to sympathetic families. Stop fearing far right which has nowhere else to go. Otherwise no hope.”

Murdoch’s patience seemed to have snapped about the time Romney’s “47 percent” remarks were leaked. Leading the charge was Peggy Noonan, keeper of Reagan’s flame and the least dogmatic of Murdoch’s Journal surrogates. “There is a broad and growing feeling now, among Republicans, that this thing is slipping out of Romney’s hands,” she declared. “It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one … Mitt, this isn’t working.” She resumed her critique a few days later, apologizing for dubbing Romney’s campaign “incompetent.” “I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite,” she wrote. “I really meant ‘rolling calamity.’”

Noonan’s deadly critique signaled that the gloves were off. Fox contributor William Kristol derided Romney’s “47 percent” comments as “stupid and arrogant;” Charles Krauthammer declared on Fox, “You don’t win an election by disparaging just about half the electorate;” Fox contributor Pat Caddell said Romney was running “the worst campaign in my lifetime;” Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly’s stand-in on Fox, thought that “if you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party;” and in Murdoch’s New York Post, John Podhoretz warned, “Romney headquarters in Boston better pay attention” to the unease and are “wrong if they think negative feelings toward Obama are sufficient” to win the presidency.

In the Romney camp, the absence of praise from the man who owns the mainstream conservative commentariat, and deadly critique from those commentators, must have sent a chill down the spine. But is Murdoch abandoning Romney’s sinking ship or trying one last time to browbeat the campaign into victory? Join Discussion

Why doesn’t Mitt Romney contribute to his own campaign?

Lately, Mitt Romney has been so consumed with fundraising that his aides have had to defend his absence from the stump. Like his foe, the Republican nominee is in the midst of a frenzied financial arms race. But one hugely wealthy individual has not yet been persuaded to part with much cash to support the Republican cause: Mitt Romney himself.

Mitt Romney is hardly the first wealthy individual to seek the White House. John F. Kennedy once quipped he had received a telegram from his father: “Don’t buy another vote. I won’t pay for a landslide.” But Romney, for whatever reason, has failed to use his personal wealth to pay his campaign’s bills. His refusal to self-finance is one of the mysteries of this campaign.

After all, if Romney were to help fund his own bid, he would have ample company. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it would violate the First Amendment to limit what candidates can spend on their own behalf. Ever since, wealthy office-seekers commonly have ponied up. John Kerry lent more than $6 million to fund his Iowa caucus drive in 2003. Hillary Clinton lent her campaign over $11 million four years later. Steve Forbes gave his 1996 campaign $32 million, and spent nearly $37 million four years after that. Ross Perot spent $63 million to finish strongly in 1992, back when that was real money.

In fact, four years ago the former governor gave his own campaign nearly $45 million. He even donated a Winnebago trailer.  “I’m not beholden to any particular group for getting me into this race or for getting me elected,” ABC News quoted him as saying. “My family, that’s the only one I’m really beholden to — they’re the ones who let their inheritance slip away, dollar by dollar.”

The Romney boys can sleep easy: Their dad’s assets are worth nearly $250 million, according to financial disclosure forms. But he has put only $150,000 into this year’s run, through a joint gift with his wife Ann to a Republican committee last spring.

Romney’s campaign surely could use the money. His summer fundraising was less robust than it appeared, since much of it was committed to party committees not controlled by him. His campaign borrowed $20 million as a “bridge” loan to keep ads on the air before the general election began. Even the super PACs have less on hand now than seemed likely just a few months ago. His strategist Ed Gillespie bemoaned the time Romney must spend fundraising. “I don’t think anybody considers Utah to be on the target state list, but it was an important event for us,” he said of a recent fundraiser held in Salt Lake City, according to BuzzFeed.

So why Romney’s reticence? Maybe this is a classic “dog that didn’t bark,” where inaction tells us more about the candidate than he wants us to know.

In this year's presidential contest, one hugely wealthy individual has not yet been persuaded to part with much cash to support the Republican cause: Mitt Romney himself. Join Discussion

Romney’s campaign into oblivion

Willard Mitt Romney was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

It is possible to forgive it as a congenital trait. After all, his Dad, the genial George Romney, successful head of the American Motor Corp and governor of Michigan (1963-69), lost his bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1968 by setting a world record for the mass manufacture of gaffes. He had such a penchant for saying one thing and then retracting it, the reporter Jack Germond announced he was fixing his keyboard so that one keystroke produced “Romney later explained…” It was charming for a time to hear what George had said lately, but when he came back from a look at the Vietnam War, he announced he’d had “the greatest brainwashing anyone could get.” His rival Eugene McCarthy cracked that a light rinse would have been enough to relieve George’s neurological condition, but this time George had gone a gaffe too far. Some American prisoners released by the Chinese had renounced their U.S. citizenship, saying they’d been brainwashed, and primary voters had no enthusiasm for electing a president who might turn out to have been the Manchurian candidate. So we got Nixon and Agnew instead. Thanks, George.

Mitt was on a similar jag through the nomination process. “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me… My wife drives a couple of Cadillacs… I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net…” Men and women who’ve been looking for work for a year are supposed to appreciate the irony when he opens up: “I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.”

It’s tough getting through the Great Recession when your net worth is just a few hundred million. Mitt doesn’t understand why there should be an intake of breath across the continent when in a televised debate argument about a healthcare detail with Republican Governor Rick Perry he says: “I’ll tell you what, ten thousand bucks? $10,000 bet?” His attempt to cozy up to followers of Nascar races is: “I have some friends who are Nascar owners.” Arriving in Britain for the Olympics, of course, his tin ear wins a tin medal for finding the organization “disconcerting.”

These gaffes have been seen as evidence of the insensitivity of a man who inhabits a parallel world, embarrassments all round rather than manifestations of ineptitude disqualifying him from high office. He undoubtedly has the managerial competence for that. For all the left’s demonization of Mitt’s venture capital company, Bain, he showed he could chart a future for dying companies and create a thriving new one (like the Staples stationery chain) just as he turned a corrupt shambles of the Utah Winter Olympics into a showcase. He will never be the president who can figure out bipartisan deals with the opposition, as Reagan did regularly over drinks with his “old buddy” Speaker Tip O’Neill (neither can Obama). Nor will he be a bumbling Warren Harding, captive of corrupt, whisky-sodden cronies. Mitt is squeaky clean. And it can fairly be said that while Obama is a very likable president who inherited a financial catastrophe, he has not exactly excelled as a Reagan-style rejuvenator. He gave priority to Obamacare over jobs, failed to retain convincing economic counsel and unwisely delegated his vital stimulus package to a pork-barrel Congress. He is seen more now as a caretaker of decline, rather than a healer of the planet, a pacifier of the oceans.

This is where Romney’s latest excursion into unreality is so maddening to Republicans with only seven weeks to voting, less in early voting states. A select few wealthy men and women were present at the dinner where Mitt asked for their donations, but the videotape, made in May, is now being viewed by millions of voters as the secret unveiling of the portrait of Dorian Gray, Mitt revealing his dark soul. See, Democrats are saying nationwide in a swelling chorus, see his contempt for half the population, the other half, the ordinary decent Americans. You there in the 47 percent whom Mitt says will vote for Obama are lazy good-for-nothing moochers. You must be. You don’t pay any income tax, you gorge on food stamps, you “believe you are entitled to healthcare, to food and housing, you name it.” No amount of retouching can change the image: not Mitt bounding on stage a day later to say this election is about the 100 percent; not the energized hard-right Tea Party activists whose views are flecks of foam on the Internet websites (“The bastards should be paying taxes like the rest of us…”); not Donald Trump telling him he has nothing to apologize for.

Mitt may have quelled the anxieties of the right that at heart he was still a closet liberal, the governor of Massachusetts whose healthcare law was a model for Obama’s, but at what a price! His conflation of the 47 percent who pay no federal income tax with feckless Obama voters is also offensive to millions of his own voters who don’t earn enough to pay federal tax but do pay state and payroll and sales taxes and pride themselves on their sense of responsibility – among them, the elderly, the military, the disabled, the young and the poor but proud Hispanics.

A tendency to misspeak during campaigns is something that Mitt Romney arguably inherited from his father. But his failure to capitalize on Obama's weaknesses speaks to far greater problems than a gaffe or two. Join Discussion

It’s time for the candidates to offer a strong education strategy

In the late 1960s, a Stanford University psychologist began conducting his now famous “marshmallow test” to understand “delayed gratification” – the ability to wait.

He would place a 4-year-old alone in a room with a single delicious marshmallow, promising to give him two marshmallows after a short wait. Some children succumbed to temptation, while others held out for the bigger reward. The children who could control their impulses went on to become better, higher-achieving students.

Why do we bring up this iconic experiment now, in the midst of the 2012 election season?

We believe that helping American children get access to a great education is a two-marshmallow political test. In contrast to relatively quick fixes like even more quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve or temporary deficit spending fiscal policies, addressing the challenges facing U.S. schools and students cannot be achieved over the course of a quarter (or even an election cycle). But underperforming labor markets and the alarmingly high 8.1 percent unemployment rate make the goal of improving our public schools even more obviously critical to America’s future. Making smart fixes to the public education system now, as outlined in our recent Council on Foreign Relations report, will pay off later.

Consider the context: America’s gross domestic product today is at its highest level ever – but we are accomplishing this level of output with about 4.6 million fewer workers than at the top of our last economic expansion. Today, the unemployment rate of people with a college degree or higher is 4.1 percent, compared with 12.7 percent for people with less than a high school degree. Demand at home and globally for low-skilled workers is falling, and the only way to address this long-term trend is through education.

The discussion of education is all the more important today because the political strategy of the moment seems to be one of benign neglect – a perilous pattern. We know from experience that when the public, press and politicians ignore mounting problems, already struggling schools and students fall further behind and our country further damages its prospects. In short, when education reform is not a major part of the discussion, the powerful private parties that control the system – especially the bureaucrats and unions – are able to have their way, thus protecting a status quo that isn’t adequately serving our kids.

In contrast to relatively quick fixes like even more quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve or temporary deficit spending fiscal policies, addressing the challenges facing U.S. schools and students cannot be achieved over the course of a quarter (or even an election cycle). Join Discussion