The Republican Thread

[Texsox]

School funding is one of the great political conundrums of our time. Who has an answer?

 

Technology. One of the major expenses in schools is textbooks. Keeping up to date text is an expensive chore. Most here have gone to college, we know the worse costs of textbooks, and the cost to schools ain't that much better. The cheapest route would be either a Kindle style device, but they would be stolen or lost and the people who need them the most are the very ones who could not afford to replace them.

 

IMHO, and the teacher unions would go nuts. We need lower education requirements for the younger grades. Private schools are not required to hire teachers with teaching certificates or even college degrees in Texas. The result at one private, religion based school I know of are lower salaries, but 10-12 kids in a classroom. I believe some high school grads can teach second grade with the proper supervision and a little training. There is a crossover point, perhaps 5th grade or so, where advanced training is required, but looking at some of the home schooling data and some of the schools I see here, smaller class size and more individualized instruction is important. The only way to afford that is lowering salaries. To lower salaries, we would need to create another group of teachers.

[bmags]

Technology. One of the major expenses in schools is textbooks. Keeping up to date text is an expensive chore. Most here have gone to college, we know the worse costs of textbooks, and the cost to schools ain't that much better. The cheapest route would be either a Kindle style device, but they would be stolen or lost and the people who need them the most are the very ones who could not afford to replace them.

 

IMHO, and the teacher unions would go nuts. We need lower education requirements for the younger grades. Private schools are not required to hire teachers with teaching certificates or even college degrees in Texas. The result at one private, religion based school I know of are lower salaries, but 10-12 kids in a classroom. I believe some high school grads can teach second grade with the proper supervision and a little training. There is a crossover point, perhaps 5th grade or so, where advanced training is required, but looking at some of the home schooling data and some of the schools I see here, smaller class size and more individualized instruction is important. The only way to afford that is lowering salaries. To lower salaries, we would need to create another group of teachers.

 

Can I ask you a question, Tex? (i'm going to ask it before a response)

 

I was recently reading about NCLB, and in it they allow states to make their own test or they could use the national test. In Missouri, they tested kids with both and the MAP test was harder and the kids did slightly better on the national test. 25% passed.

In Texas, 24% passed the national test, but on their state test, 90% passed.

 

Now, I am well aware of the huge variations mere wording can have on a similar question for kids from different cultures. And so maybe Texas nailed it. But, did they just give out a completely fluff test?

[bmags]

School funding is one of the great political conundrums of our time. Who has an answer?

 

Not me. Especially after I studied amt. of $ spent on students and things like grad rates, and they weren't necessarily positively correlated. It was all over the place. There are so many factors.

 

Right now I'm interested in a few options. Tennessee STAR program has shown that smaller class sizes in elementary ages proved to make them better students ALL the way through H.S. graduation. Also, I think I am going to support pre-K education, I believe that will make a big difference.

 

Maybe year round schooling is a good idea. It can solve overcrowding and that loss of knowledge in summer.

 

On vouchers I have no idea. I see studies with completely different results all the time. I'm willing to see how NCLB works, but, after it's done I'd favor taking the federal gov't back out or national restrictions and maybe use revenue sharing to help out state education.

[Balta1701]

Not me. Especially after I studied amt. of $ spent on students and things like grad rates, and they weren't necessarily positively correlated. It was all over the place. There are so many factors.

One monetary factor that does seem to work out very well and hold strongly in the stats is that if the majority of the kids in a school come from low income households, then it tends to drag down the whole school.

Researchers have been demonstrating this result since 1966, when Congress asked James S. Coleman, a Johns Hopkins sociologist, to deliver a report on why the achievement of black students lagged far behind that of white ones. The expected answer was that more than a decade after Brown, black kids were still often going to inferior schools with small budgets. But Coleman found that the varying amount of money spent on schools didn’t account for the achievement gap. Instead, the greater poverty of black families did. When high concentrations of poor kids went to school together, Coleman reported, all the students at the school tended to learn less.

 

How much less was later quantified. The Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks reanalyzed Coleman’s data in the 1970s and concluded that poor black sixth-graders in majority middle-class schools were 20 months ahead of poor black sixth-graders in majority low-income schools. The statistics for poor white students were similar. In the last 40 years, Coleman’s findings, known informally as the Coleman Report, have been confirmed again and again. Most recently, in a 2006 study, Douglas Harris, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, found that when more than half the students were low-income, only 1.1 percent of schools consistently performed at a “high” level (defined as two years of scores in the top third of the U.S. Department of Education’s national achievement database in two grades and in two subjects: English and math). By contrast, 24.2 percent of schools that are majority middle-class met Harris’s standard.

 

There are, of course, determined urban educators who have proved that select schools filled with poor and minority students can thrive — in the right circumstances, with the right teachers and programs. But consistently good education at schools with such student bodies remains the rare exception. The powerful effect of the socioeconomic makeup of a student body on academic achievement has become “one of the most consistent findings in research on education,” Gary Orfield, a U.C.L.A. education professor, and Susan Eaton, a research director at Harvard Law, wrote in their 1996 book, “Dismantling Desegregation.”

 

Most researchers think that this result is brought about by the advantages that middle-class students bring with them. Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation lays them out in his 2001 book, “All Together Now”: more high-level classes, more parent volunteers and peers who on average have twice the vocabulary and half the behavioral problems of poor students. And, especially, more good teachers. Harris, the economist, says that poor minority students still don’t have comparable access to effective teachers, measured by preparation and experience. The question, then, is whether a plan that integrates a district by class as well as by race will help win for all its schools the kind of teaching that tends to be linked to achievement. “The evidence indicates that it would,” Harris says.

More discussion in the article. Basically, the more you can spread out the low income kids, the less you concentrate the high income family kids, the better everyone does. The problem is, when you go in to places like New York, Chicago, L.A., the big urban centers, the schools that are the biggest problems, the ones where we're leaving children behind, you're running in to something like 80-90% or more of the population of that school coming from low income, poverty line type families. At that point it's basically endemic. If you give everyone a voucher, it doesn't work, because all the schools in the area are the same thing, the only thing you can do is bus every student 2 hours out in to the suburbs, and no one's going to pay for that.

[bmags]

One monetary factor that does seem to work out very well and hold strongly in the stats is that if the majority of the kids in a school come from low income households, then it tends to drag down the whole school.

More discussion in the article. Basically, the more you can spread out the low income kids, the less you concentrate the high income family kids, the better everyone does. The problem is, when you go in to places like New York, Chicago, L.A., the big urban centers, the schools that are the biggest problems, the ones where we're leaving children behind, you're running in to something like 80-90% or more of the population of that school coming from low income, poverty line type families. At that point it's basically endemic. If you give everyone a voucher, it doesn't work, because all the schools in the area are the same thing, the only thing you can do is bus every student 2 hours out in to the suburbs, and no one's going to pay for that.

 

Absolutely. Like I said I don't know the answer. But it seems clear the most important moment in education is k-5, so if we can lower class sizes to 15 in inner cities and get pre-K education perhaps we can start seeing improvement in reading levels. ANd to do this we need teachers and schools and money.

[Texsox]

Can I ask you a question, Tex? (i'm going to ask it before a response)

 

I was recently reading about NCLB, and in it they allow states to make their own test or they could use the national test. In Missouri, they tested kids with both and the MAP test was harder and the kids did slightly better on the national test. 25% passed.

In Texas, 24% passed the national test, but on their state test, 90% passed.

 

Now, I am well aware of the huge variations mere wording can have on a similar question for kids from different cultures. And so maybe Texas nailed it. But, did they just give out a completely fluff test?

 

I do not know enough about the national test to draw a comparison. I do know that we have a major controversy here about "teaching to the test" and the many, many, classroom hours that are devoted to "test taking skills" that have no other value other then learning to take standardized tests. There is a lot of pressure placed on schools to have their students do well on these tests. That has been a seismic shift over the past 10-15 years. Careers and made and lost on how well students do on the tests.

 

I'd like to know if the same students took both tests. How large of a sample size was used and how well distributed it was. It would also be helpful to know if either test was administered in Spanish. Bottom line, teachers have curriculum in place that helps kids to sort out answers and other test taking strategies. I fail to find much value in that.

[bmags]

I do not know enough about the national test to draw a comparison. I do know that we have a major controversy here about "teaching to the test" and the many, many, classroom hours that are devoted to "test taking skills" that have no other value other then learning to take standardized tests. There is a lot of pressure placed on schools to have their students do well on these tests. That has been a seismic shift over the past 10-15 years. Careers and made and lost on how well students do on the tests.

 

I'd like to know if the same students took both tests. How large of a sample size was used and how well distributed it was. It would also be helpful to know if either test was administered in Spanish. Bottom line, teachers have curriculum in place that helps kids to sort out answers and other test taking strategies. I fail to find much value in that.

 

Interesting. We'll see how NCLB pans out in it's successes, but I can't see it being renewed.

[southsider2k5]

Where will the money come from? The harsh reality is we need a leveling of the system. As noted in the article, parents can move to a neighborhood with better schools, which generally means higher property values and higher housing prices. When we start looking at school funding on a state wide basis, and fund the schools that way, we begin to offer the kinds of services that Winnetka takes for granted and a poor inner city school can only dream.

 

There are pros and cons on both sides, what worries me the most about vouchers and some of these plans is it will take money out of the public system where most of the poor children will be. Their parents will not be able to make up the difference between the voucher and the private school.

 

Also, the whole he believes this because they donate stuff is crap. If, for example, Southsider, Kap, and AlphaDog where offering an endorsement, wouldn't the candidate be a conservative who supports most of what they believe in? Would it then be fair to say that the candidate only supports a given issue because Southsider, Kap, and AlphaDog gave him an endorsement? It's a two way street. Most endorsements are a shared vision or philosophy. They travel in the same circles, attend the same benefits and fundraisers, visit the same churhces.

 

Having been involved as a candidate for school board in a heavily poor and minority district I have some opinions on the matter.

 

First of all IF the federal government is going to be involved in education funding, then the property tax system we have now is socio-economic distrimination. I don't know if vouchers are the answer or not, but why is it that education is the one thing we have no choice in?

 

Think about it, if you get a bad haircut, you go to another barber. If you have a bad experience on the car lot, you go to a different dealer. If your bank charges high fees and gives you bad service you close your account and go somewhere else. But if you kid goes to a crappy school system, the only thing you can do is move. We worry about taking money from bad schools, but in reality, it usually isn't money that is going to solve the problems. Usually there is a poverty cycle that has inbred expectations of failure into students from day one. They enter the school system with no expectations or hope of doing anything better than their parent/s did. School is looked at by the kids as a place to hang out and get a meal, the parents look at it as a babysitter and a free meal for the kid. The parents got nothing out of school, so why should they expect their kids to? These parents usually also fall into one of two groups, either they are working a ton of hours at a horrible job and don't have time to help the kids prepare for school, or they are into drugs or something, and don't care about their kids. It starts way before the kids get into schools. For kids that really want to do well, they are stuck in rooms with all of these kids, and it makes learning next to impossible. Those are the kids that need a choice. The kids that don't care, won't care no matter what their school options are. Now throw in social promotion and keep pushing those same kids who don't read into middle school and guess how hard it is to teach a math or science class?

 

There is more than meets the untrained eye here.

[Texsox]

I was hoping you would chime in.

 

You don't have a choice in a lot of government services, police protection, fire department, neighborhood parks, libraries, etc. Your hometown is your hometown. But we can make it better by giving our time and talents. Volunteer in the school, clean up a park, be part of a neighborhood crime watch.

[lostfan]

Having been involved as a candidate for school board in a heavily poor and minority district I have some opinions on the matter.

 

First of all IF the federal government is going to be involved in education funding, then the property tax system we have now is socio-economic distrimination. I don't know if vouchers are the answer or not, but why is it that education is the one thing we have no choice in?

 

Think about it, if you get a bad haircut, you go to another barber. If you have a bad experience on the car lot, you go to a different dealer. If your bank charges high fees and gives you bad service you close your account and go somewhere else. But if you kid goes to a crappy school system, the only thing you can do is move. We worry about taking money from bad schools, but in reality, it usually isn't money that is going to solve the problems. Usually there is a poverty cycle that has inbred expectations of failure into students from day one. They enter the school system with no expectations or hope of doing anything better than their parent/s did. School is looked at by the kids as a place to hang out and get a meal, the parents look at it as a babysitter and a free meal for the kid. The parents got nothing out of school, so why should they expect their kids to? These parents usually also fall into one of two groups, either they are working a ton of hours at a horrible job and don't have time to help the kids prepare for school, or they are into drugs or something, and don't care about their kids. It starts way before the kids get into schools. For kids that really want to do well, they are stuck in rooms with all of these kids, and it makes learning next to impossible. Those are the kids that need a choice. The kids that don't care, won't care no matter what their school options are. Now throw in social promotion and keep pushing those same kids who don't read into middle school and guess how hard it is to teach a math or science class?

 

There is more than meets the untrained eye here.

$$$$$

 

It's very hard to explain the cycle of poverty thing to people and that's probably the main reason.

[EvilMonkey]

Where will the money come from? The harsh reality is we need a leveling of the system. As noted in the article, parents can move to a neighborhood with better schools, which generally means higher property values and higher housing prices. When we start looking at school funding on a state wide basis, and fund the schools that way, we begin to offer the kinds of services that Winnetka takes for granted and a poor inner city school can only dream.

 

There are pros and cons on both sides, what worries me the most about vouchers and some of these plans is it will take money out of the public system where most of the poor children will be. Their parents will not be able to make up the difference between the voucher and the private school.

 

Also, the whole he believes this because they donate stuff is crap. If, for example, Southsider, Kap, and AlphaDog where offering an endorsement, wouldn't the candidate be a conservative who supports most of what they believe in? Would it then be fair to say that the candidate only supports a given issue because Southsider, Kap, and AlphaDog gave him an endorsement? It's a two way street. Most endorsements are a shared vision or philosophy. They travel in the same circles, attend the same benefits and fundraisers, visit the same churhces.

Tex, money isn't the issue. If it was, how could the charter schools in DC with excellent success so far (which the Dems want to stop funding), be doing so with 30% less per student than the DC school system? All the problems that conservatives complain about how government can't run things efficently are shown in public school systems. They are an entrenched boondoggle and are not run well. Keep throwing monmey at it, and you get no results. Sure, money is important, but you have to change the educational heirachy, union dominace and parental involvement. A very tall order.

 

As for funding, I am all for some sort of statewide funding, as basing school money purely on property taxes doesn't seem fair. But if I am still paying the huge amount I am now, and my son's schools start losing things left and right, I am gonna be pissed.

[southsider2k5]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2008...bama-world-tour

 

Networks Tilted 10-to-1 In Favor of Obama World Tour

By NB Staff (Bio | Archive)

July 29, 2008 - 11:07 ET

 

The Big Three broadcast networks lavished an incredible amount of attention on Barack Obama's tour of the Middle East and Europe last week. Compared to a very similar trip by John McCain last March, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts gave Obama more than ten times the coverage — 92 minutes for thWorst of the Week bar graph 7/29/2008 | NewsBusters.org; MRC.orge Democrat's eight-day trip, compared to just eight and a half minutes for the Republican's seven-day tour.

 

The MRC's Peter Sasso calculated that the CBS Evening News was the most obviously tilted, with more than 34 minutes of Obama coverage during the eight days from July 20 through July 27. Back in March, McCain's seven-day trip garnered a piddling ten seconds from CBS, a ridiculously lopsided 200-to-1 disparity. For its part, ABC's World News gave Obama nearly as much coverage as CBS (about 33 minutes), or roughly 15 times more attention than they provided McCain's trip (slightly more than two minutes). NBC Nightly News spent nearly 25 minutes covering Obama, or about four times more than they gave McCain back in March (a little over six minutes).

 

All three networks led their evening newscasts with Obama on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Thursday; ABC and CBS also opened with Obama on Tuesday, while NBC that night began with the impending landfall of Hurricane Dolly. In March, McCain's travels never topped the news even though he hit most of the same countries: Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Britain and France, with Obama also visiting Afghanistan and Germany.

 

While the network anchors who flew to meet with Obama did pose some tough questions — such as pressing him to admit that the troop surge he opposed has been a success — there was giddy celebration as well. On Thursday, NBC's Brian Williams touted how "the first ever African-American running as presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party brought throngs of people into the center of Berlin, streaming into this city, surging to get close to him, to hear his message," while ABC featured the reaction of one German who proclaimed Obama "my new Messiah." [Audio/video (1:05): Windows Media (4.16 MB) and MP3 audio (370 kB)]

 

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll conducted during the trip found 67% of voters think the media want Obama to win. Are the other 33% blind?

 

For more, see the July 25 CyberAlert.

 

[BigSqwert]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2008...bama-world-tour

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the McCain campaign ask that there not be a staff of reporters accompanying him on his tour?

[BigSqwert]

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the McCain campaign ask that there not be a staff of reporters accompanying him on his tour?

The reason I brought it up is because I was channel surfing the other day and caught Howard Fineman (I think) saying that McCain's argument that Obama's tour was getting more coverage was kind of a weak argument since his campaign requested that the press not accompany McCain on his tour. Or something to that effect. Sorry for the run on sentence.

[lostfan]

If that's true then that's a pretty damn slick tactic.

[Texsox]

Tex, money isn't the issue. If it was, how could the charter schools in DC with excellent success so far (which the Dems want to stop funding), be doing so with 30% less per student than the DC school system? All the problems that conservatives complain about how government can't run things efficently are shown in public school systems. They are an entrenched boondoggle and are not run well. Keep throwing monmey at it, and you get no results. Sure, money is important, but you have to change the educational heirachy, union dominace and parental involvement. A very tall order.

 

As for funding, I am all for some sort of statewide funding, as basing school money purely on property taxes doesn't seem fair. But if I am still paying the huge amount I am now, and my son's schools start losing things left and right, I am gonna be pissed.

 

Money is the issue. When the difference between what school districts spend can be as much as 10X the amount per student, it has to make a difference. When schools are too poor to regularly buy new text books or have computers, there is a difference. When some school districts can spend more money on weight rooms for their football team then others can for their libraries, there is a difference. Just walk through a poor school and walk through a rich school and imagine how you would bridge the difference.

 

Imagine what that DC CHarter school could do with another $1,000 per student.

[EvilMonkey]

Money is the issue. When the difference between what school districts spend can be as much as 10X the amount per student, it has to make a difference. When schools are too poor to regularly buy new text books or have computers, there is a difference. When some school districts can spend more money on weight rooms for their football team then others can for their libraries, there is a difference. Just walk through a poor school and walk through a rich school and imagine how you would bridge the difference.

 

Imagine what that DC CHarter school could do with another $1,000 per student.

But that charter school slready spends thousands LESS than the regular schools do, and kicks thier asses in all areas. more for less, so it isn't just money.

 

Tex, the charter school there spends $7500 per student. By comparison, the public schools spent $13,330 per pupil, in 2005!

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/wm727.cfm

Edited July 30, 2008 by Alpha Dog

[bmags]

I just wanted to say this has been a very interesting discussion.

 

I recently read a paper about the public school system in America, it said that one of the key policy issues is what goals people wanted it to address. One of the distinctions of these goals was whether someone viewed education as a public or a private good. (I think by nature education is a public good but it's an interesting read).

 

if people would like I can upload it or link it.

[Texsox]

But that charter school slready spends thousands LESS than the regular schools do, and kicks thier asses in all areas. more for less, so it isn't just money.

 

Tex, the charter school there spends $7500 per student. By comparison, the public schools spent $13,330 per pupil, in 2005!

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/wm727.cfm

 

Are you saying their program would be worse if they had more money to spend? What it proves is a small group of ourstanding people can do wonders. Scaling that nationwide is all but impossible. If you has a choice of working for $50,000 in Winnetka or $25,000 in Roundout, where would you work? Would you rather your kids have 3 year old Social Studies books, or ten year old? Which kids will learn computers better, those with cast off Windows 98 machines, 1 per classroom, or a bank of new Vista machines 1 per 5 students?

 

I agree, money isn't everything, but nationwide, if half the schools start with $13,300 and the other half start with $7,500, which group will do better? I believe the group with the resources.

 

Another factor in DC is making the students feel like someone cares, in this case, it could be that they were part of a special program. The Hawthorne Effect for psychology afficionados.

[EvilMonkey]

Are you saying their program would be worse if they had more money to spend? What it proves is a small group of ourstanding people can do wonders. Scaling that nationwide is all but impossible. If you has a choice of working for $50,000 in Winnetka or $25,000 in Roundout, where would you work? Would you rather your kids have 3 year old Social Studies books, or ten year old? Which kids will learn computers better, those with cast off Windows 98 machines, 1 per classroom, or a bank of new Vista machines 1 per 5 students?

 

I agree, money isn't everything, but nationwide, if half the schools start with $13,300 and the other half start with $7,500, which group will do better? I believe the group with the resources.

 

Another factor in DC is making the students feel like someone cares, in this case, it could be that they were part of a special program. The Hawthorne Effect for psychology afficionados.

If you are going to add more money, you also need to make it easier to fire crappy teachers, get rid of tenure and find a way to cut down on the size of the administration and their pay/pensions as well. Especially here in Illinois, the Superintendents pensions are crazy. Based on an average of their 4 highest years pay, most districts give the ones they like huge raises the last 2 or 3 years they work, then when they retire, the pension is picked up by the State, which means by everybody, not just those wealthy taxpayers in Winnetka. The poor taxpayer in Ford Heights (if there actually IS a taxpayer in Ford Heights) is also contributing to the big guy's pension.

 

 

[Texsox]

If you are going to add more money, you also need to make it easier to fire crappy teachers, get rid of tenure and find a way to cut down on the size of the administration and their pay/pensions as well. Especially here in Illinois, the Superintendents pensions are crazy. Based on an average of their 4 highest years pay, most districts give the ones they like huge raises the last 2 or 3 years they work, then when they retire, the pension is picked up by the State, which means by everybody, not just those wealthy taxpayers in Winnetka. The poor taxpayer in Ford Heights (if there actually IS a taxpayer in Ford Heights) is also contributing to the big guy's pension.

 

The schools I have been close to did not seem to have too many administrators, although I imagine that could be an issue in some districts. Especially those poor ones that have to employ cops to assure safety for the students and teachers. With the teacher shortage that plagues most districts, firing crappy ones would be a dream to get to, but it would probably be more helpful to make the job attractive enough to hire better ones.

[southsider2k5]

The schools I have been close to did not seem to have too many administrators, although I imagine that could be an issue in some districts. Especially those poor ones that have to employ cops to assure safety for the students and teachers. With the teacher shortage that plagues most districts, firing crappy ones would be a dream to get to, but it would probably be more helpful to make the job attractive enough to hire better ones.

 

Aministrators have become a necesary evil with the governmentalization of school systems. With all of the requirements and reporting that is done to the state and national educations depts, these people become needed to do all of the paperwork. Lots of it has been pushed onto teachers, but most is done at the administrative level.

 

Its a huge waste of money.

 

I agree with the idea behind NCLB, of being able to hold teachers accountable just like in any other profession, but the idea that their job preformance, and the preformance of entire school districts should be judged by standardized test scores is laughable, especially when you look deeper into thing about the way the tests are done, such as including the mentally handicapped learning disabled and the like into the scores just like anyone else. A 16 year old kid who has the mental capacity of a 6 year old, is expected to test like a 16 year old, or it is held against the school district. Tell me how that makes sense.

[Texsox]

I agree. Plus if we want to truly get rid of crappy teachers, and there are some, but not as many as some may think, who will do that if we cut back on administrators? Someone has to be reviewing the teacher enough to offer a fair evaluation. We keep demanding more and more accountability from teachers, but accountable to whom and how? That usually means additional supervisors. Once again, we have to be careful what we wish for.

 

And test scores suck as a barometer. My bestest friend teaches third grade. I have subbed for her and have helped grade papers the past three years. The difference in the overall talent between those classes was easily seen. Was she a better teacher with the high achieving group and worse with the low achieving? I seriously doubt it. It also fuels all the workshops and classroom time devoted to "how to take this test". I wish I had a better example, but some of the "skills" are along the lines of "if you see the word compare in the question, eliminate answers with exact, more, and less, and look for like or almost".

 

It is a soft science in evaluating teachers, but we have demanded some objective evidence, and are paying the price for it.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/us/polit...amp;oref=slogin

 

A Canceled Obama Visit, and the Story Behind It

 

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By JEFF ZELENY

Published: July 29, 2008

 

WASHINGTON — For four days, Senator John McCain has sought to keep alive a story about how Senator Barack Obama called off a visit to American troops recuperating from war wounds at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

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Last week, Mr. McCain’s aides took pains to stay away from the controversy. But by Monday, the criticism had been turned into a television commercial and the McCain campaign had tapped a retired soldier to add a personal face to the story.

 

“I’m sure that Senator Obama could have made no better use of his time than to meet with our men and women in uniform there,” Michael J. Durant, a retired Army soldier, said in a statement released by the McCain campaign. “That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities.”

 

Mr. Durant said the stop “was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff and the traveling press corps would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama.”

 

That assertion is not correct, Mr. Obama’s advisers say. Before his visit to Ramstein Air Base, which is near the medical center, was canceled, the plan called for reporters to stay behind at an airport terminal while Mr. Obama and one adviser met with the troops. Why? The Pentagon does not allow reporters and photographers inside Landstuhl.

 

For weeks, Mr. Obama had been planning to visit wounded troops in Germany, just as he did in Afghanistan last week and previously had done at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Yet the Landstuhl visit carried more risk because it was to come in the middle of an overseas campaign trip.

 

Robert Gibbs, a senior strategist for the campaign, said Mr. Obama thought he could carry out the visit without being perceived as politicizing it.

 

But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.

 

Mr. Obama was asked by reporters to explain the matter on Saturday in London.

 

“That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns,” Mr. Obama said. “So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there.”

 

The McCain television commercial, which asserts that Mr. Obama chose to go to the gymnasium over visiting troops, is not entirely accurate. Instead of going to Landstuhl on Friday morning, Mr. Obama also conducted an interview with CNN in his hotel in Berlin.

 

Assertions in early news reports that the Pentagon had told Mr. Obama he could not visit the medical center were incorrect, said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman. He said the military personnel in Germany had made arrangements for Mr. Obama’s visit and were surprised when it was called off.

 

The cancellation provided one of the few sour notes in an overseas trip that otherwise seemed to be well orchestrated. It offered an opening on a subject, military affairs, that the McCain campaign believes Mr. Obama is vulnerable on.

 

If the story behind the story of the canceled troop visit has run its course, one question remains: Why didn’t Mr. Obama leave his aides behind, even the retired general, and make the visit by himself?

 

“Even him going alone would likely be characterized by some as a political event,” Mr. Gibbs said in an interview on Monday, adding, “He decided not to put the troops in that position.”

[Texsox]

Seriously, someone run through this visit/non visit and tell me how it should influence someone's vote? What insight does this offer on Obama and how he would be as President?