Of all the heat and light sparked by the campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans to discredit John Kerry, I have been struck most by two perceptive essays written one day apart by David Broder of The Washington Post and Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal. Essentially, both of these pieces cut through the daily hair-splitting over the particulars of the events of Kerry’s Vietnam service to the crux of the issue—the “cauldron of memory”, as Henninger calls it, of the culture war that grew out of the 1960’s and that has divided the baby-boomer generation ever since over the war in Southeast Asia and the cultural revolution for which it became a metaphor.Broder harks back to Marilyn Quayle’s speech to the 1992 Republican Convention in Houston: “Remember, not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution, or dodged the draft. Not everyone concluded that American society was so bad that it had to be radically remade by social revolution….Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it.” I was present at that speech and it resonated with me, for I was a borderline baby boomer at The University of Texas supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964 and soon afterward watching closely as the “make love, not war” groups were in formation along the West Mall and The Drag on the UT campus. I was in hot debate with the John Kerrys of my world then, and very little has changed.

Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, which has been rerun several times recently, brought back old and painful memories, and old anger. For his testimony was not just about the accusations of military atrocities committed in the field of battle that has the Swift Boat Vets so ballistic; it was about his condemnation of what he and his wing of his generation considered the atrocity of U. S. foreign policy in its entirety, not to mention the American society that had produced it, i.e., America is the problem. In many ways, this is the pedigree of Michael Moore.

A number of my friends and I have wondered, how could Kerry and the Democrats have been so misguided as to allow all these ghosts to be awakened by having his Vietnam War record become the centerpiece of this campaign without apology for his denigration of the country and its heroes who fought it? Henninger has the answer: it’s a matter of principle—opposition to the Vietnam War is the moral foundation of the modern Democratic Party, and Kerry thought he could have it both ways. Condoleezza Rice made the same point when she noted that Vietnam is the lodestar of 1960’s protest and Democratic Party principle—we were wrong and America is to blame.

Broder completes his essay by predicting that this aspect of the cultural divide will not rest until all of my generation has passed on. He may be right, but it’s about more than a war, it’s about a worldview, and until then, it’s “us versus them”, and we know who is on our side.

As we enter the election home stretch, the central issue remains war and peace, and it’s still Bush’s to lose. And if Karl Rove and the Bush brain trust allow Kerry and the Democrats to get away with the demagoguery of the Democratic convention message on war leadership, shame on the Republican Party.Charles Kesler makes a telling point in a recent issue of the Claremont Review of Books. He believes the polls suggest that, as Americans feel more secure and notice the war less, they regard President Bush less favorably. This was the Churchill syndrome following World War II. Perhaps, Kesler speculates, voters fear that this is not really war, but a long protracted police action, better fought now by airport screeners, international organizations, and intelligence czars than by the military. In that case, they may prefer a President who will declare victory or stalemate and bring the troops home, invoking the lessons of Vietnam—an ideal opportunity for a John Kerry, who has said that the war on terrorism is primarily a matter of law enforcement and intelligence.

This is plausible and possible to pull off by a duplicitous liberal/left that sees no good intentions in the Bush Doctrine or in much else that has happened in the conduct of the war, particularly at the front in Iraq. But since Vietnam, liberals have never been of one mind on foreign policy. In fact, they have been split at least three ways—from the few remaining Joe Lieberman hawks to the Woodrow Wilson/Carter/Clinton liberal internationalists to the Michael Moore kooks on the far left who see no good purpose for American power in the world. I don’t believe that Kerry can win unless he is allowed to have it all three ways, and Republicans should not let him get away with that.

Meanwhile, there are other key issues and themes that should get serious attention in the campaign, most of which can be winners for the Republicans. Some have already been highlighted by the Bush campaign; I fear that others may not get the emphasis they deserve:

· The “ownership society”—There is little doubt that this will be the central theme of domestic policy priorities for Bush’s second term. The primary elements should be built around individual ownership and control over the benefits packages of health care insurance and retirement, the former through universal Health Savings Accounts and the expansion of tax deductibility to individually purchased insurance and the latter through the transformation of Social Security with phased-in privatization and Personal Retirement Accounts.

· Tax policy—The priorities should be to make permanent the tax rate cuts of the first term as well as elimination of the estate tax, and to initiate bold new reforms based on a flat tax system to completely replace the current system. This should be part and parcel of any longer term ownership society theme.

· Trade—There should be aggressive follow up on the opening offered by The World Trade Organization’s agreement on elimination of agricultural export subsidies by taking the lead in eliminating them in the U. S. This will result in allowing poor countries to participate in the global markets and pursue their own comparative advantages, a stroke for self-interest as well as compassion.

· The courts and the culture—The next four years will offer the opportunity for as many as three Supreme Court appointments, and the President should make it clear in no uncertain terms that any such appointments will emphasize strict constructionism over creativity from the bench and the restoration of representative democracy to the resolution of conflicts in matters involving society’s deeply held beliefs and values. He should further make it clear that Senate obstruction of appointments and the further perversion of the Constitutional prerogative of advise and consent will not be tolerated.

· Education—To the extent that the Federal government has a role to play in public education, the No Child Left Behind Act was a start in sending the message that we are serious about accountability and standards. The message should now be taken to the next level with aggressive support for breaking up the education delivery system monopoly with comprehensive school choice, public or private, beginning with an immediate exit option for children in NCLB non-performing schools and the voucherizing of all Title I funding. This will help advance what is already becoming the civil rights revolution of the 21st century at the state and local level.

· Spending and the size of government—It’s pretty simple here: return to the Reagan motto of “the government is too big and spends too much”, acknowledge the first term acquiescence to the worst impulses of the discretionary spending excesses, and commit to do better, with vetoes.

· Compassionate conservatism—Liberals attempt to hijack the “values” issue by couching them in terms of government policy, because they emphasize the moral obligations of society (as delivered by government) over those of the individual. Bush should return to his “compassionate conservatism” theme of 2000 and counter this by putting his faith-based initiatives back on the front burner, but this time by establishing a delivery system for social services through vouchers to the users rather than by grants to the providers.

· Immigration—Sensitivity to alienating parts of the Hispanic voting base aside, the country should enforce our current immigration laws, reject amnesty, exact penalties for hiring illegal immigrants, and return to policies that assign top priority to the assimilation of legal immigrants into the American mainstream.

· Liberation of broadband—The President should announce loudly and clearly that the Internet should be freed from the antiquated, monopoly driven rules of the last century by deregulating all broadband links to homes and offices and dissolving all artificial distinctions between local and long distance communications as well as voice and data, thereby releasing the wealth-creation power of our entrepreneurs.

· Tort reform—Transformation to an ownership society cannot succeed without serious Federal lawsuit reform and relief from the “tort tax” on small business, which is being blocked by the obstructionists in the Senate. As the President has said, “You can’t be pro-small business and pro-trial lawyer at the same time.”

The Republican Party began to achieve governing ascendancy in 1994 as the post-Cold War party of essentially conservative ideas juxtaposed to a party devoid of them, and ideas always trump arguments about “competency”. Their key to victory lies in spending the next two months reasserting that claim.

The saga continues. As the title indicates, this is the third of a series of essays on the efforts to address the overhaul of Texas public school finance and search for a successor to the flawed “Robin Hood” system crafted by a series of special legislative sessions in the mid-1990’s. In the wake of District Judge John Dietz’s ruling that the current system is in violation of the Texas Constitution, the scramble is once again underway to fix the problem politically, while awaiting the inevitable appeal of the decision by the State to the Texas Supreme Court.The primary issues remain those of “equity” and “adequacy”, as those are vaguely defined by the Constitution, amplified by the Edgewood vs. Kirby decisions and subsequent legislation. Equity, as defined by the Edgewood case, means that all students shall have access to an education of high quality that will prepare them to participate fully now and in the future in the social, economic, and educational opportunities in Texas, and that the organization and management of all levels of the education system will be productive, efficient, and accountable. Funding adequacy seems to be in the eye of the beholder, and none of the recent studies analyzing the adequacy of Texas public education funding are conclusive by objective analysis. I should add that one particular study concluded that current funding levels are sufficient to provide a 55% passing rate on the TAKS reading and math exams, and this has been used in court by the State to justify current spending as adequate, a dubious claim at best, even though the Texas Education Agency’s current definition of an “acceptable” district is one with a TAKS pass rate of 50% for reading, 35% for math, and 25% for science!

Clearly, however, given the wide disparity among districts and individual campuses in facilities, teacher quality, and student achievement, including the pervasive achievement “gap” between majority and minority children, no objective analysis of the equity of public education in Texas would produce a positive conclusion. So if funding adequacy encompasses equity, the case is made. But it is a major leap from here to the conclusion that these inequities are the result of inadequate funding of public education in the aggregate, or that increased spending would rectify them, and one can look at the performance and spending growth patterns of every urban school district in the country to validate this point.

Let’s look at spending in Texas. Based on analyses produced by the Benchmark Educational Resource Group, annual public education operating expenses in Texas approximate $7,000 per student, and total spending increased by over 40% over the past five years, more than twice the sum of enrollment growth and inflation during that period. For taxpayers, this growth in spending translates into huge increases in local school property taxes, which, for the five largest cities in Texas, doubled during the five years from 1997-2002. In addition, the allocation of resources leaves much to be desired. About 57% of education expenditures are allocated directly to the classroom, and while some would have us believe that this is reasonable given the increasing burdens of necessary support services, it should be noted that, in 1965, Texas spent 60% of its personnel costs on teachers compared to less than 40% today. Meanwhile, as to student performance, although much progress has been made with increased standards and accountability, which is reflected primarily in improved TAAS/TAKS scores, college entrance exam scores are flat at best, national norm-referenced exam scores reflect that over one-half of Texas students cannot read at grade level, and the minority achievement “gap” is not closing.

So, put simply, in the aggregate, we don’t have a funding problem in public education finance, we have a cost structure and productivity problem. And I don’t mean to paint all schools with the same brush, for some schools have relatively high productivity, but the reason for the overall inadequacy of productivity is the misallocation of resources because of the perverse incentives that are by nature so deeply embedded in education cost structures. The current delivery model that has been in place essentially unaltered for over eighty years is flawed because, in spite of all the good work done on standards and accountability in recent years, the system remains primarily “input” and compliance driven rather than “output” and performance driven.

The solution, both for productivity enhancement and the transformation of education finance, is major systemic restructuring, beginning with marketizing the delivery system by adopting and expanding comprehensive school choice in all its manifestations—vouchers, charters, online education, home schooling, etc.—evaluated by value-added assessments of performance in terms of student achievement. This will introduce the dynamics of competition to the incentive structure, which is the ultimate accountability, and will produce the only means of finally determining the adequacy of funding.
Earlier this year, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Foundation published a list of principles for school finance which includes the fundamental point that the basis of the equity argument for increased education funding should be challenged, because educational equity is not the same as school funding equity. The list goes further to say that the equity issue should focus on whether or not children are being educated, not on how much money is being spent, and that, although it may cost a certain sum to deliver a particular type of education, it does not require the same amount for all types. In other words, one size does not fit all, and funding should be tied to individual student outcomes.

Former House Education Committee Chairman Paul Sadler has written that no tax, however fairly applied, perfectly matches the cost drivers in every school district or grows at the same or predictable rate, nor is there a formula that perfectly matches state funds to any given school district. Although he has never been known as a supporter of school choice, he probably inadvertently makes the same point as the TPPF report from a different perspective—the funding should follow the child. We should remember that school choice already exists for those who are privileged to be able to afford a private school or a home in an affluent neighborhood with a high quality public school. The substantial majority of those left behind without such choices are relatively poor, inner city, and often minority children. We owe them the same opportunity to “vote with their feet”.

Polling in Texas consistently shows that significant majorities of voters favor finance plans that include school choice alternatives that would allow parents to transfer their children out of under-performing schools to other public or private schools. Meanwhile, the Coalition to Invest in Public Schools, representing many of the lead plaintiffs in the current funding adequacy case, has adopted as one of its principles adamant opposition to “the use of public funds to provide financial resources to private elementary and secondary schools through funding of programs or materials, tax credits, virtual charters, and/or vouchers, and considers such funding an improper use of tax revenue and public monies.” This kind of antiquated, “one best system” thinking is detrimental to the future of further advances in education accountability and finance reform, as well as, ultimately, the growth in educational achievement of the children of Texas.