A Revelation of Character

Today, President Obama is making a televised speech to grade schools across the United States. The reactions (or lack thereof) of people around the country reveal quite a bit about their motives and biases. And fault is spread like jam on toast.

The President
President Obama broke a cardinal rule: don't exclude parents in decision-making. Although it shouldn't be, politics today is incredibly partisan. The Obama Administration should have been cognizant of this reality, and allowed the parents the option to view the speech before being shown to their children. By ignoring the fact that parents tend to be incredibly defensive about what information is given to their kids, the massive backlash has resulted in many schools refusing to show the speech.

Congress
In 1991, then-President George H.W. Bush also organized a televized speech to school children. At the time, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, as they do today. However, Congress reacted by holding hearings and invstigations, casting a negative light on what was most likely a benign outreach effort. Today, though, Congress has issued no response, further revealing a bias that only builds barriers to bipartisanship.

The Public
Unfortunately, the narrative coming from political parties--and now the media--has caused some individuals on to political fringe to take extreme, defensive stances against those with whom they disagree. The not-so-fruitful "birther" and "Obama's-a-Muslim-and-that's-bad" movements are cases in point. Now, there is a knee jerk reaction among similar crowds to shelter their children from anything Obama says. It's a shame that the gap between Republican and Democrat has widened so substantially that people in the United States can't even trust their own president's speeches.


Perhaps more needs to be done to mend fences among those of voting age before the federal government reaches out to their kids.