Obama 101

This weekend, I heard one Democratic pundit say that when the text of the President's speech to our kids is released on Monday, the Republicans will be embarrassed by the fact that it is so politically benign.

The stupidity of that statement is the fact that we will never know what that speech was really going to say. This White House never, ever, released a prior statement as to what the President will be saying before they went ahead and told our nation's teachers to get prepared for the President's "command performance". For sure, it could have been greatly modified in those 5 days while this speech had blown up into such a heated issue.

But, let's be realistic. It wasn't really the speech, itself, that was at the true heart of the controversy. It was that lesson plan or course outline that accompanied the announcement of the speech. It didn't take a lot of imagination to get a little nervous about what was "in" that lesson plan. Even today, it still looks to be very much political in its content. For that reason, the President's team knew that they were literally caught red handed. To soft peddle this fact, they somewhat modified the outline to take out that clearly political step of thinking about ways to "help the President". But, this was just a ruse to make it look as if the White House was trying to be completely non-political. However, the other steps in the outline -- left up to the discretion of any completely left-leaning, Obama-loving union teacher --- could easily extend well beyond the non-political barriers and make that lesson plan a pure exercise in propaganda. In the days to come, I'm sure we'll hear about it.

For this very reason, I don't think there should have ever been a lesson plan. The fact that it even exists takes this speech out of the realm of being a simple pep-talk to our kids. Now, at the beginning of the school year, our children -- already failing at a rate of 30% across the nation and 50% in our major cities -- are being told that they now have to take "Obama 101" as part of their curriculum. That's what's wrong with this whole thing and that's why so many parents are so upset.

Obama doesn't get it.