Obama's School Speech vs. Bush's School Speech

The loving liberals seem mystified that some people would rather not have their children subjected to the benevolent word of their Chosen one. As Jason Linkins wrote:

Earlier this morning, President Barack Obama gave his planned address to the nation's schoolchildren. This caps off a ridiculous period of time in the life of our Republic, in which a number of people completely lost their minds at the prospect of Obama talking to children about the importance of education, and the media -- to its great discredit -- pointed cameras at them and treated them as if they were sane.

Why, who wouldn't want their children hear the President of the United States praise the power of education?

Rewind: October 1, 1991, Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC

Then President George H.W. Bush decided to give a speech to a group of junior high kids praising the power of education. Unlike Obama, he didn't send out study questions, he didn't push for universal broadcasting and he didn't try to assign writing projects on how the students could help the president. He simply gave a speech where he told the kids to "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," and "Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams." And how did the left respond?

The Washington Post dropped the headline: "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," while House Majority Leader, Richard Gephardt, complained "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students."

But democrats being, well, democrats, decided not to stop at bellyaching.

Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech.

That's right, the noble left who simply want our children to learn and think it was a wonderful idea for the President to address the nation's children actually launched an official congressional investigation when a Republican president did so . . . and Bush's speech was on a much smaller scale. Naturally the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly, but that didn't stop them from giving it the ol' liberal try.