President using schools for his own political agenda

This is simply unconscionable! With his address to the country's public- school students, the president is:

using education for his own political use, namely, an ongoing effort to inoculate himself against charges of inattention to domestic issues.

using the education department to produce paid political advertising for the president.

If you disagree with this, then would it change your mind to learn that these were the charges Democrats made against President George H.W. Bush in 1991 when he broadcast a speech for students?

They attacked Bush for using Education Department funds to produce the speech and for promoting a political agenda among school children. All charges made, of course, before the broadcast took place.

“The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students,” House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said. “And the president should be doing more about education than saying, ‘Lights, camera, action.’ ”

Funny, that last. Saying, "Lights, camera, action" is explicitly what President Obama really is doing. According to the Dept. of Education web page about the Sept. 8 event,

We invite all students age 13 and older to create and upload their videos to YouTube by October 8. Submissions can be in the form of video blogs, public service announcements (PSAs), music videos, or documentaries. Students are encouraged to have fun and be creative with this project! The general public will then vote on their favorites to determine the top 20 finalists. These 20 videos will be reviewed by a panel of judges including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The panel will choose three winners, each of whom will receive a $1,000 cash prize.

A thousand bucks for a Youtube video? I like this idea! In fact, I wish the administration would use this kind of incentive a lot more, and in a lot more areas - for example, very sizable cash prizes for breakthrough demonstrations of energy-efficient technologies. That way the field would be open to innovators and entrepreneurs.

It's well-covered by now that President Obama backtracked rapidly from his original script for Tuesday's talk, in which he asked the students to write to him explaining how they could help him achieve his goals (presumably the education goals outlined in the rest of the broadcast). Furor from the Right over such "community organizing" made that line disappear rapidly and publicly.

But there's this from UCLA law Professor Eugene Volokh:

On WESTLAW, I looked up other news stories about the speech [by President Bush]. It was reported as 10 minutes in some reports and 12 minutes in others. It was carried live on CNN, PBS, and Mutual radio. The Secretary of Education sent a letter urging schools to have their students watch, but I didn’t find any evidence of how many schools followed that recommendation. And most striking: Bush laid out goals — to increase the graduation rate, improve student competency and better prepare students for entering school — and said, "Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter. I'm serious about this one. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals." [Volokh's boldface]

Whose ox is being gored and all that.... My daughter is in high school. We got an automated call from the principal that we could opt her out of the president's broadcast Tuesday. In case you're interested, no, we won't.