George Bush: School Speech, 1991

Here's an eyeopener.

There has been so much whining on the Left about parents' negative response to Obama's speech to American students.

The uproar and accompanying discussions over Obama's back-to-school speech, to be aired nationally to school children in kindergarten through 12th grade, is nothing compared to what happened when President George H. W. Bush gave a speech to students in 1991.

Byron York, Washington Examiner, offers some interesting information.

York writes:

The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported.

With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"

Democrats did not stop with words. 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. "The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC," Ford began. "As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event."

Interesting, isn't it?

The Democrats and the lib media were aghast because President Bush spoke to school children. It was a waste of money. It was a waste of classroom time. It was a political stunt, using students as props.

Interesting.

I don't expect any Republicans to call for an investigation and hearing on Obama's speech. No, they seem to have a bit more sense than what the Dems exhibited in 1991.

(If the issue was the cost of the speech, what about the cost of the investigation and hearing?)

Concern about Obama's speech seems to be coming mostly from parents who are troubled about the liberal slant that their children are subjected to in the classroom. It's coming from Americans who don't trust Obama, due to his penchant for grabbing power, skirting the Constitution, attacking the private sector, threatening our freedoms, and swiftly attempting to overhaul the country via dramatic and far-reaching changes.

Obama is facing much more of a grassroots situation than what President Bush faced.

The Democrat Party and the lib media, such as the Washington Post, attacked President Bush for making the speech, not parents.

That's quite telling.

Although Obama won't face hearings after he utters the final lines of his long-winded address to school kids, I think he has more of a problem.