OPINION
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD !"LJWorld.com !"Monday, October 3, 2011
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EDITORIALS
Election details Proper reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures is a detail-oriented business — just like running an election.
S
ecretary of State Kris Kobach isn’t the only elected official to face questions about flawed campaign finance reports, but his position as the state’s top election officer makes the situation a little more unsettling for the people of Kansas. Last week, the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission reported that finance reports filed by Kobach’s campaign had omitted about $35,000 in contributions and $42,000 in spending. The commission will hold a hearing on Oct. 26 to determine whether Kobach’s campaign treasurer should face a fine in the case. This is the second time in less than three years that Kobach has been involved in questionable campaign reporting. In June, the Federal Election Commission concluded that the Kansas Republican Party had committed three federal campaign finance violations in 2007 and 2008, while Kobach was the state party chairman. The FEC cited flawed record-keeping and reporting, but Kobach portrayed the problems as technical. Record-keeping and reporting seem to be among the “technical” duties involved with running a campaign — or running the secretary of state’s office. In the more recent case, Kobach credited his campaign treasurer with uncovering the reporting problems in an internal review. He said the review was conducted because, “We just wanted to have our books balanced down to the penny.” That’s a laudable goal, but shouldn’t that review have been conducted before campaign finance reports were submitted? The $35,000 and $42,000 errors also represented quite a few pennies. In fact, it was more than 10 percent of what his campaign raised and subsequently spent. Kobach is portraying this case as a minor detail in his campaign, but, in the office he leads, details matter. In the coming months, Kobach will be putting in place new restrictions that will require Kansas residents to prove their citizenship when they register to vote and show photo identification when they go to the polls. Records that are mishandled could result in qualified voters being denied the right to cast their ballots. The supposed goal of the new voting rules is to prevent voter fraud, but voting mistakes also can have a serious impact on election outcomes. Maintaining voter access and ensuring the integrity of elections in Kansas is a job filled with necessary details. Kobach should make sure none of them fall through the cracks.
Education waivers have strings attached Obama Gives States a Voice In ‘No Child’ — New York Times, Sept. 24 WASHINGTON — Many Americans, having grown accustomed to Caesarism, probably see magnanimity in that front-page headline. Others, however, read it as redundant evidence of how distorted American governance has become. A president “gives” states a “voice” in education policy concerning grades K through 12? How did this quintessential state and local responsibility become tethered to presidential discretion? Here is how federal power expands, even in the guise of decentralization: Ohio Sen. Robert Taft (18891953) was “Mr. Republican,” revered by conservatives chafing under the domination of the GOP by Eastern money that preferred moderates such as New York Gov. Tom Dewey, the GOP’s 1944 and 1948 presidential nominee. In “The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party,” Michael Bowen, historian at Pennsylvania’s Westminster College, recounts how Taft leavened his small-government orthodoxy with deviations, including federal aid to primary and secondary education. In the 79th Congress (194547), Taft sponsored legislation to provide such education more than $8 billion over 25 years. The sum was huge (the 1947 federal budget was $34.5 billion), and the 25-year horizon said federal intervention would not be temporary. Taft drafted his bill
George Will
“
georgewill@washpost.com
Secretary Arne Duncan is offering states waivers from NCLB’s most annoying provisions if the states will accept administration conditions for education policy.”
with help from the National Education Association (NEA), the teachers union which today is an appendage of the Democratic Party, except when the relationship is the other way around. Bowen says Taft’s bill “included provisions to guarantee that states would not cede control of their educational systems to federal authorities.” Guarantee? Today we are wiser. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House. Such federal aid to education came in 1965, the year of liberals living exuberantly, which produced Medicare and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The latter completed the long repudiation of the idea that some sectors of life are fenced off from federal supervision. In 1976, the NEA made its first endorsement of a presiden-
tial candidate; Jimmy Carter reciprocated by creating the Education Department. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the eighth reauthorization of the ESEA. It is due for a ninth, but the Obama administration considers the Republican-controlled House of Representatives icky and the separation of powers tiresome, so it is dispensing with legislation in favor of coercion — what has been called “coercive federalism.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan is offering states waivers from NCLB’s most annoying provisions if the states will accept administration conditions for education policy. The slowmotion but steady submission of primary and secondary education to Washington proceeds in the name of emancipation. Emancipation, that is, from the lofty idealism of preposterous expectations — NCLB’s loopy decree that by 2014 there will be 100 percent proficiency in reading and math. This incentive to report chimerical progress has produced exactly that: Many states have defined proficiency down so their tests will show more progress than does the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal test. When Duncan warned (exaggeration in the service of supposedly constructive panic) that 82 percent of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled failures next year, states clamored for relief, which is offered in the form of waivers: Washington’s dictation of education policy through legislation will be waived
if states embrace Washington’s dictation of education policy by executive branch fiat. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, questions the “legal authority to grant conditional waivers in exchange for reforms not authorized by Congress.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is less delicate. In a letter to Duncan, Rubio tartly says the rule of law is at risk: “NCLB allows the secretary to grant waivers for existing provisions under the law, but nowhere does the law authorize waivers in exchange for the adoption of administration-preferred policies.” Furthermore, Rubio writes, the waivers “would entail states having to adopt a federally approved ‘college and career ready’ curriculum: either the national Common Core curriculum standards, or another federally approved equivalent.” Rubio says: “Such activities are unacceptable; they violate three existing laws” that “prohibit the federal government from creating or prescribing a national curriculum.” For the sake of argument, let us, as lawyers say, stipulate that the measures Duncan’s waivers would make mandatory are the niftiest ideas for education since Socrates sat down on a log with a student. That is beside the point. Two points, actually: The expansion of federal power inevitably expands executive discretion that marginalizes Congress. And since Taft, we have lived and learned. — George Will is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
OLD HOME TOWN
100
From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Oct. 3, 1911: “The semi-centennial and fifteenth annual reunion YEARS of the surviving officers AGO and men of the Fifth KanIN 1911 sas Cavalry will be held in Lawrence this week, October fifth and sixth. ... There are not many left of the Fifth Kansas, probably there will be about forty here for the meeting.” “Edna McGee and Edna Estis were arrested today for disturbing the peace. The girls are said to have made insulting remarks to some man. They will be tried tomorrow.” — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld. com/news/lawrence/history/old_home_ town.
War of 1812 anniversary poses dilemma
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FORT ERIE, ONTARIO — The deficit remains a threat to the United States, economic crises persist in Europe, two wars rage halfway around the world, the Republicans are beginning to focus on their nomination fight and even the Russians are planning an election for next March. So you have ample reason not to feel guilty about not having focused on this urgent question that the United States, Canada and Great Britain face next year: What is the best way to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812? This may not be the best time to plan a war commemorative. The United States is marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which will consume five years and already has attracted considerable attention. Seven years ago the attempt to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War was a dud. There’s not a huge appetite for yet another set of commemorative books, historical novels, reenactments and school dioramas. But this landmark will not go away, even if most people’s memories of the War of 1812 disappeared the last time they picked up a Kenneth Roberts novel. And embedded in this anniversary are several sticky questions, such as: How does Canada celebrate its victories over American invaders without alienating its biggest trading partner? How does the United States approach a war in which its principal adversary, Great Britain, is now one of its closest friends? And do the British pause to mark this event at all, given that for them it was but a brief, minor side-
David Shribman dshribman@post-gazette.com
show in the far more important Napoleonic Wars? Along with the Korean War, the War of 1812, which most Americans remember dimly as being about impressment on the high seas and freedom of movement on the Great Lakes, is often called the Forgotten War. It is sad that Americans are so forgetful, for this conflict, which lasted roughly two and a half years, gave the United States its national anthem and its national identity, cemented in large measure the nation’s cultural and geographical boundaries, ushered in 200 years of peace with Britain and Canada, made the White House white and provided durable heroes such as Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Oliver Hazard Perry and Tecumseh. It ended in virtual stalemate — no side lost substantial territory except, of course, the Indians — and was a decidedly mixed experience for Americans, whose generals were execrable, whose militia didn’t fight well and whose twin theories of warfare (that the French Canadians would rush to the U.S. side and that Canada would collapse into American arms) were ludicrous. “The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere
matter of marching,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, then out of office, “and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.” Maybe Jefferson wasn’t a genius after all. At the same time, however, the American Navy excelled, forcing the British to lose whole squadrons, which had rarely happened before. American naval prowess on the Great Lakes is still the stuff of legend, as is the old warship, the USS Constitution, known then and now as Old Ironsides. But from the viewpoint of Canada, whose War of 1812 heroes are Isaac Brock and Laura Secord, the conflict is a different matter altogether, remembered for its glorious victories over American invaders. “Thus the war that was supposed to attach the British North American colonies to the United States accomplished exactly the opposite,” the late Canadian historian Pierre Berton wrote in his two-volume history of the conflict. “It ensured that Canada would never become a part of the Union to the south. Because of it, an alternative form of democracy grew out of the British colonial oligarchy in the northern half of the continent.” All this was two centuries ago, but it remains potentially awkward today. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which often stresses renowned moments in Canadian history, vowed in its federal election platform to undertake a vigorous commemoration of the war. Now, however, it is trying quietly to steer the
commemoration away from noisy celebrations of American defeat, an effort that may not be entirely successful. Canadian military historian Jack Granatstein believes the commemoration will be the occasion for what he calls an antiAmerican festival. “The normal discourse in Canada is anti-American,” he says. “It’s a secular religion, and this is the only acceptable form of bigotry in Canada. So when we have a chance to get up on our high horse and be selfrighteous and say we whipped the United States, we’ll do so. It doesn’t mean more than one Canadian in a hundred knows a thing about the war. They don’t. Usually we have a moral superiority. This time we have 200-years’-old military superiority.” But few people on this side of the 49th parallel are likely to notice. “Americans are not exactly fascinated with the War of 1812,” says Richard J. Finch, director of the Fort Meigs State Memorial in Perrysburg, Ohio, the largest reconstructed War of 1812 site in the country. “It’s sandwiched between the American Revolution and the Civil War, so it tends to get neglected.” The war ended in a draw, but the contest to conduct the most comprehensive commemoration isn’t even close. The Canadians have appropriated millions, the Americans hardly anything. At this rate, the Canadians will appropriate the war entirely, at least for the next several years. Which brings us to a lesson for our time: Even forgotten wars can be lost 200 years later. — David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.