Pubdate: Thu, 13 Jan 2005
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2005 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: George F. Will
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)
Note: Please refer to MAP Focus Alert #298, 10 Jan 2005 at 
http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0298.html and consider writing a letter to the 
editor criticizing these Congressionally-prohibited taxpayer-funded 
attempts to disguise government propaganda as authentic news reporting or 
opinion.

NO AD LEFT BEHIND

In communist East Berlin, one sign of the government's swollen self-regard 
was the cluttering of public spaces with propaganda banners by which the 
government praised itself for providing socialism. In Washington today, the 
Education Department building is an advertisement for its occupants.

Eight entrances are framed by make-believe little red schoolhouses labeled 
"No Child Left Behind." High on the building's front are two other 
advertisements for that 2002 law: Large banners hector passersby to visit 
www.nochildleftbehind.gov.

This building-as-billboard is the workplace of those eager beavers who had 
this brainstorm: Let's pay a million taxpayer dollars to a public relations 
firm to manufacture enthusiasm for the No Child Left Behind Act, including 
a $241,000 payment to columnist and television talk-show host Armstrong 
Williams for his praise of the legislation. The eager beavers are long on 
energy but short on judgment.

Just 10 years ago Washington trembled because many Republicans who had won 
in the cymbal-crash elections of 1994 had vowed to abolish the Education 
Department. Education, they said, is a quintessentially state and local 
responsibility. But soon Republicans in Congress and a Republican president 
were deepening Washington's reach into education. In 1996 Republican 
appropriators gave the department a 15.7 percent increase in discretionary 
spending. And No Child Left Behind increased federal education spending 
more than any increase requested by President Bill Clinton, who was the 
teachers unions' poodle. Some of that money went to Williams.

When conservatives break with their principles, they seem to become casual 
about breaking the law, too. Last year the then-General Accounting Office 
accused the Department of Health and Human Services of illegal spending 
when it distributed fake "news" videos that were used by 40 local stations 
around the country. In them the many benefits of the new Medicare 
prescription drug entitlement were "reported" by a fake reporter whose 
actual status -- an employee of an HHS subcontractor -- was not revealed. 
The English version of these "video news releases" concluded, "In 
Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

This scofflaw enterprise was an appropriate coda to the lawless making of 
this law. Republican leaders traduced House procedures by holding open the 
vote for three hours, giving them time to pressure sensibly reluctant 
legislators. And the Justice Department says the Bush administration broke 
no law when the Medicare program's chief actuary was told he would be fired 
if he gave Congress his estimate that the program's 10-year cost would be 
about a third more than the $400 billion the administration claimed.

The GAO has frequently had occasion to insist that taxpayers' money cannot 
be used when the "obvious purpose is 'self-aggrandizement' or 'puffery.'". 
Last week it had another occasion, chastising the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy for also disseminating fake news videos.

It is difficult to calculate how many billions of dollars the government 
spends on indefensible, if not illegal, self-promotion. Democrats, too, 
have violated the spirit, and perhaps the letter, of various laws that 
contain language such as "no part of any appropriation contained in this 
Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by 
the Congress" and appropriated funds may not be used "in a general 
propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidates." But 
conservatives should be less aggressive than Democrats in using taxpayers' 
money to try to mold taxpayers' minds.

It is impossible to draw, with statutory language, a bright line between 
legitimate informing and illegitimate propagandizing by government. What is 
indispensable is common sense, and that is atrophying as this lawyer-ridden 
nation sinks deeper into the delusion that sensible behavior can be 
comprehensively codified.

Obviously government leaders must try to lead by persuading the public. But 
government by the consent of the governed should not mean government by 
consent produced by government propaganda. Unfortunately, as government's 
pretensions grow, so does its sense that its glorious ends justify even the 
tackiest means.

Eight decades ago, in a Washington not progressive enough to think that it 
could or should superintend primary and secondary education, the president 
set a tone that today's government -- a Leviathan with attention-deficit 
disorder -- could usefully emulate. "Mr. Coolidge's genius for inactivity," 
wrote columnist Walter Lippmann, "is developed to a very high point. It is 
far from being indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert 
inactivity." After the debacles of hired and faked journalists, we need a 
contagion of Coolidgeism, beginning in the Education Department, if it is 
educable.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl