Bush Issues Education <i>Challenge</i>
The CBS News Political Unit is tracking the campaign commercials of the presidential hopefuls. Jane Ruvelson offers insight on a new Bush ad that promotes the Texas governor's education agenda while criticizing the Clinton-Gore administration.
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The Ad: On Friday, George W. Bush released a new education ad, criticizing the administration's record and putting forth his agenda. Challenge the Status Quo runs through Tuesday in six Illinois media markets (though not Chicago) and cities in neighboring Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri. The campaign is spending less than $100,000 to run the ad.
Audio: Announcer: "Is the status quo in America's schools good enough? Under Al Gore and Bill Clinton, national reading scores stagnated. America's high school students place almost dead last in international math tests. The achievement gap between poor and non-poor students remains wide. Gore and Clinton had eight years, but they've failed.
"As president, George W. Bush will challenge the status quo with a crusade to improve education. He'll fight for reforms hailed as the most fundamental in a generation: demand high standards and accountability for students and teachers, restore local control of schools, increase funding but change the system so successful schools are rewarded and failing ones must improve. He'll turn Head Start into a reading program and close the achievement gap that hurts those on the edges of poverty. His goal? Teach every child to read because there are no secon-rate children, no second-rate dreams. Governor George W. Bush: A Fresh Start for Education."
Visual: Kids of every ethnicity at school and playing outside. Bush appears several times, looking comfortable and enjoying his interaction with the students.
Fact Check: No inaccuracies.
The Strategy: The Bush campaign is calling Challenge the Status Quo the "first ad of the fall campaign" and the change of target is hard to miss. Since his Super Tuesday victory, Bush has set his sights on Gore and dogged his every move, with hits on the vice president's fund-raising practices, veracity, and now, his achievements on education.
At a campaign event last week, Bush said education "has been the passion of my time as governor and it will be the priority of my time as president." To prove his commitment to education and aptitude for reform, his campaign has amassed a number of impressive statistics about scholastic improvement in Texas. Couple these with the ad's negatives about Clinton-Gore and the one-two campaign punch is complete. Not surprisingly, the Gore campaign disputes Bush's claims and released an education ad of its own over the weekend.
A recent national poll indicates that voters are almost equally split on which candidate would better champion education reform, high priority issue traditionally carried by the Democratic candidate. However, exit polls from last week's Texas primary indicate that only 32 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans believe Bush has enacted significant education reform.