The Pols Respond
FERGUSON, ANDREW
The Pols Respond by Andrew Ferguson THE LAST THING any of us has a right to expect from politicians is a dignified silence, and this is true even in the face of a transcendent horror like the...
...Then Lott took the mike to fill in the details...
...We have got to ask ourselves, Can we do more...
...The Republicans took the stage and smiled at them and the kids smiled back, waving at the photographers, clowning for their pals...
...Oh, we can bring in all the experts, telling us this philosophy will work or that one...
...Even now the speaker and majority leader are working the phones, trying to line up a roster of “leaders” from the worlds of academia, business, entertainment, and political activism to lend their names to the effort, and maybe even appear at a town meeting or two...
...My mother was a teacher— her whole life,” Lott said, by way of explaining why he, as majority leader of the United States Senate, felt competent to address issues of education, and why education was “issue number one in my heart...
...It was to be held at Ellen Glasgow Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia...
...He continued: “As we look to what has happened in Colorado, as we all have to examine ourselves, ask ourselves, Have we done enough, as teachers, as parents, administrators, we need a dialogue with our children...
...The answer,” said Richard Gephardt, “won’t be found in state legislatures or the halls of Congress...
...But why quibble...
...For the children...
...The Glasgow students made of themselves a compliant audience, row after row of them slumped on risers and dressed in their baggy T-shirts and outsized jeans and blocky sneakers...
...In the immediate aftermath of the murders he merely offered anodyne assurances that our schools were still safe...
...Republican staffers on Capitol Hill thus labored deep into the night to formulate a response that would end-run the president—out-Clinton Clinton, as it were...
...And we need to take some time—all members of Congress, and I intend to do this—we need to go home and listen to you...
...pay for an additional 600 school police officers in a mysteriously selected 336 communities...
...You know what works in education...
...Thank you very much...
...Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Denny Hastert, Senate President pro tempore Strom Thurmond, and other congressional Republicans were to boom their recentlypassed “Ed-Flex” bill...
...But the initial reaction to the Littleton shootings was unexpectedly promising...
...It was a perfect Clinton event: several hours of talking, issuing finally in nothing of any consequence...
...Asked specifically what these “dialogues” would look like, one aide pointed to the appearance by President Clinton with high school children the day after the Littleton shootings—a nationally televised roundtable that won the president plaudits for his sensitivity...
...Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Fortunately, Republican leaders had an event of their own already scheduled for that Tuesday...
...The Republicans spoke in order of rank—Reps...
...Within 72 hours he and his fellow solutionists had righted themselves...
...But this was only the beginning...
...Thus the announcement...
...And we hope that will never happen again...
...and print up an extra 150,000 copies of the government’s pamphlet Early Warning Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools...
...So we care about kids...
...In the days that followed, Republican aides elaborated on the plan...
...spend $180 million to “promote comprehensive school safety strategies,” whatever those might be...
...At the same time, he drew the lesson that such violence “could happen anywhere,” meaning presumably that our schools weren’t safe...
...We care about schools...
...And that response would be . . . well . . . not more gun control, for reasons of philosophy and finance (the National Rifle Association gives the bulk of its campaign contributions to Republicans) . . . and a National Grief Counseling Initiative might smack of social engineering . . . and any additional budget appropriations for school cops or metal detectors or whatever might break agreed-upon budget caps...
...Frist of Tennessee, then Hastert and Lott—and all of them offered condolences to the community of Littleton, taking pains to note that they themselves knew a large number of children personally, had indeed fathered children of their own, and in point of fact had once been children themselves...
...You know what your needs are...
...By the weekend after the murders, the White House announced an event for the following Tuesday, at which the president would offer further solutions to the problem of evil...
...Despite the last-minute reconfiguring, the event, as it turned out, was mostly about the Ed-Flex bill...
...For this was the announcement— however sketchy —of the National Conference on Youth and Culture...
...You can’t legislate love,” said George W. Bush...
...We need to listen to you...
...And we’re going to ask all our colleagues in the House and Senate to start a dialogue about this...
...Reporters had been forewarned of the announcement and were out with their camera crews in force...
...So there it was: proof that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, the president can’t address with a budget appropriation, a “public-private partnership,” or a Third Way, New Democrat-style initiative that avoids the twin vices of Big Government and Republican laissez faire...
...And then to take that information and put together good legislation that will work for our kids...
...The Pols Respond by Andrew Ferguson THE LAST THING any of us has a right to expect from politicians is a dignified silence, and this is true even in the face of a transcendent horror like the murder of schoolchildren...
...Davis of Virginia and Castle of Delaware, then Sen...
...But now the event was hastily recast, to showcase instead the Republican response to the murders at Columbine High...
...My wife has taught for 33 years...
...But what we need to do is, we need to listen to kids...
...The kids applauded this...
...I don’t know how you stop it,” said Pat Buchanan...
...You know, I taught for sixteen years...
...The announcement panicked congressional Republicans, who were, as always, slower to mobilize, owing at least in part to those laissez-faire instincts that have made them infamous...
...The Republicans didn’t seem to mind...
...And so it was that the leaders of the Republican party lumbered last Tuesday into a packed assembly hall at Glasgow Middle School and announced the National Conference on Youth and Culture...
...Even the president, the talkiest politician since William Jennings Bryan and a dedicated solutionist who can find a public-policy answer to any problem, was oddly subdued...
...With these bona fides established, Hastert took the microphone to announce the initiative...
...A dozen or so were arrayed in a semi-circle at the back of the podium, behind the speakers, as props for the cameras...
...Working, working, working, the president announced that the federal government would pay for the victims’ funerals and compensate parents for wages lost during their absence from work...
...We’re all aware of the situation in Colorado, and our hearts go out,” Hastert said...
...The National Conference on Youth and Culture will consist of a series of 12 to 18 town meetings, televised if possible, and privately financed (those damn budget caps again...
...The administration issued a bull with the ominous title: “The White House at Work: President Clinton: Actions to Help Keep Our Schools Safe...
...That’s the kind of thing Lott and Hastert would really like to do,” the aide said...
...These turned out to be a handful of gun control measures that he had proposed before Littleton...
...They wore that cheerful, contented look of utter vacancy we have come to expect from our teenagers...
...And there’s one thing we can do...
...I call here today for a National Conference on Youth and Culture...
...After all, it is for them that the National Conference is going to be launched...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 32
