Race to Sanity
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 3, 2010
Sometimes it seems as if we’re doomed to fight a new culture war between orthodox liberals who have lavish faith in the power of government and orthodox conservatives who have almost no faith at all.
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But occasionally a politician comes along with a more measured vision of a limited but energetic government. Recently, for example, I read a speech by a politician who gave examples of both when government had failed (the old welfare system) and when it had succeeded (the railroad legislation under Lincoln, the bank reforms under F.D.R. and the highway system under Eisenhower). “Our government shouldn’t try to guarantee results,” this politician said, “but it should guarantee a shot at opportunity for every American who’s willing to work hard.”
That sentence struck me as a pretty good foundation for a political philosophy. It was delivered by President Obama at the University of Michigan commencement last month.
Obama administration policies haven’t always hewed to this limited but energetic approach. But there is one area where they sure have: education. The Obama approach to education could serve as a model for anybody who wants to build a center-out governing majority.
Over the past decades, federal education policy has veered between the incredibly intrusive to the appallingly supine. The Obama administration, however, has used federal power to incite reform, without dictating it from the top.
First, Obama and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, set up a contest. They put down $4.5 billion in Race to the Top money. They issued some general guidelines about what kind of reforms states would have to adopt to get the money. And then they fired the starting gun.
Reformers in at least 23 states have passed reform laws in hopes of getting some of the dough. Some of the state laws represent incremental progress and some represent
