As a friend of mine put it at the time of his confirmation in March 2021, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona “doesn’t strike one as the sharpest tool in the shed.” An academic colleague of mine added in an email just yesterday: “Cardona destroyed the schools in Hartford, CT while he was in charge here—and now can do it on a national level.”
Of course, that is to be expected. What else would one expect from a secretary in the Department of Education in a Democratic administration? To be sure, there have been some good secretaries of education since the dread day that the least-sharpest president in the long history of the United States, Jimmy Carter, created this abomination of a new government bureaucracy in 1980. Our secretary of education under President Trump, the most-sharp Betsy DeVos, was one of the best. Alas, she is a rarity. We honored her in October at our annual gala at The American Spectator by bestowing upon her our illustrious John Von Kannon Service to the Cause Award. Several months prior to that, Secretary DeVos honored us by providing the superb cover piece to our epic special print edition on education. (READ MORE: Robin Hood Becomes a Communist)
What DeVos demonstrated during her tenure in the Trump administration is that the best secretaries of education are those committed to, well, genuine education. That is to say, unlike Democrat secretaries of education, they’re not mere saps and stooges to the odious teachers’ unions and the nation’s disastrous public schools — i.e., government schools.
The secretaries of education in Democratic administrations are effectively secretaries of public education. They are supreme educational bureaucrats dedicated to the supremacy of government education. Like the Democratic Party to which they are beholden, their business is government.
What do they do? They do government.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate Carter’s Department of Education. But Reagan and his excellent secretary of education, my good friend Bill Bennett, learned quickly that once Big Government gets itself a new department or agency, trying to abolish the blasted thing is just about impossible. To quote Reagan from his historic October 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Speaking of quoting Ronald Reagan, the education secretary to President Joe Biden (the least-sharpest president since Jimmy Carter), the aforementioned Commissar Cardona, failed to quote Reagan accurately. In fact, Cardona’s quoting of Reagan earns him a big fat F.
Holding forth at the 2023 Winter Meeting for the Western Governors’ Association in Jackson Hole, Wyoming — yet another waste of taxpayer dollars — Cardona cackled about some sort of need for “technical assistance” to “schools.” Meaning, of course, to public schools — and to teachers’ unions.
Perhaps in a rare flash of attempted bipartisanship, Secretary Cardona offered instead another flash of educational ignorance. Intending to quote the Great Communicator for his cause, Cardona said of the Gipper: “I think it was President Reagan who said, ‘We’re from the government. We’re here to help.’” (READ MORE: The Left Trots Out Stale Lies About Reagan and AIDS)
Unfortunately, Secretary Cardona, that ain’t quite right. Providing not exactly an exemplar of citation skills for American students, Cardona failed to include the preamble to Reagan’s great declaration. To wit: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Students take note: Context and accuracy are important when quoting things historical. You will notice that in Cardona’s case, context is especially apt. Once quoting Reagan in full, well, the statement from Cardona has a considerably different meaning.
Then again, given what passes in our public schools nowadays, I doubt that Cardona’s closest friends care at all, especially his pals in the Democratic Party and their teachers’ unions. They just want to toss more feed into the federal government’s overflowing education trough.
And I doubt that Cardona’s boss, Sleepy Joe, even blinked. I’m sure President Biden gives Secretary of Education Cardona an A-plus.
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