Does the President Belong in School?

Like newspapers across the country, our local paper had a story about all the controversy surrounding a speech by U.S. president Barack Obama to school children today. There is even a piece about how former first lady Laura Bush supports Barack Obama's address to school students.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.

I think the partisan motivation of conservatives who are opposed to Barack Obama speaking to school children is largely misplaced. Their issue is not so much with the president speaking to school children, but rather a left-wing Democrat president doing so. If this were four years ago and the president of the United States happened to be George W. Bush, these same people complaining would be pleased to have the speech, and they would be indignantly decrying left-wingers who did not want their children watching it as un-American or unpatriotic or some such.

If the motivation for parents being angry is only their partisan rancor, I disagree with them.

However, I believe that no president of the United States ought to be speaking to school children, period. It is none of his business. Public schools are run by local governments. The presiding officer of the executive branch of the federal government simply has no business interposing himself into the area that is run by local and state governments. Barack Obama has as much business speaking to school children in American local schools as the prime minister of India would. Neither one has any constitutional jurisdiction over local American government. It is an inappropriate for President Obama to speak to South Louisiana school children as it would be for the Jefferson Parish sheriff to have a personal audience with school children in Portland, Oregon. Laura Bush is wrong. We are not compelled to respect any president of the United States. The president of the United States is, rather, supposed to be compelled to respect the Constitution, which precludes his usurpation over local matters.

And this is across the board, regardless of party and no matter what his ideology is.

The federal government is simply too powerful and intrusive. And the federal government is doing a lousy job of running the federal government itself - bloated, in debt, inefficient, bursting out of its constitutional limitations, and intrusive (if not oppressive) of the states and local governments. One would think that Barack Obama would have enough to do regarding his own job and his own executive branch within the federal bureaucracy - without sticking his nose into the business of local governments, teachers, and parents. Local governments are often the only ones run with any kind of efficiency and responsiveness to constituents. To have the president of the United States getting involved in how local government is to be run is a joke. Let him get his own house in order.

Some argue that the president's speech was harmless cheerleading, being non-partisan, and basically just telling kids to stay in school. I don't care. The prime minister of India could have said the very same thing - it is still none of his business. The Jefferson Parish sheriff could just as well tell Portland kids to stay in school. And it would be equally ridiculous.

Everything the president does (whether Democrat or Republican) costs money - our money. He does not pay for his own vacations, transportation, nor does he bear the costs of security details every time he goes someplace to speak. He ties up roads, air traffic, and productive commerce; and for many teachers and students today, he ironically caused real teaching and real learning in the flesh to stop while he read from a teleprompter over a TV screen to millions of children he will never see, and who will never see him. One has to wonder how much this speech cost an already overextended and bankrupt federal government.

We Americans have turned the presidency into a monarchical cult of personality, as though his giving a speech is more important than the constant, productive, and unsung labor of parents, teachers, and other people who are actually doing the real work, day in and day out, of raising and educating children. Let us not forget that the president of the United States is a bureaucrat - whether Republican or Democrat. He produces nothing in exchange for his ample salary and the wealth and prestige he will enjoy the rest of his life. He has his job because of politics - not because he is qualified to teach anything to anyone.

Barack Obama chose not to be a school teacher. It apparently was not his calling. So he should butt out. He should not tell children how to learn, teachers how to teach, governors how to run state governments, nor janitors how to sweep floors.

I'm hoping that Americans one day grow up and see the federal government and the president as their servants with limited authority instead of worshiping them as masters with almost boundless might. It was good to see conservatives rise up and refuse to treat the president like a demi-god.

But if conservatives were to treat a Republican president the same way, or better yet, if the president of the United States were to say that such frivolous and expensive speeches are not his job - now that would be real progress.