Bush Bashes Gore Education Record
A U S T I N, Texas, Aug. 28 -- While playing defense on prescription drugs, George W. Bush also went on offense today, hammering Al Gore’s record on education and vowing to make the issue his top priority if elected to the White House.
“Our goal is not just to win an election, our goal is to spur a great movement … by putting an education reformer in the White House,” Bush told reporters in Austin. “Education would be my first priority as president, and it is a fundamental difference in this election.”
Speaking at the governor’s mansion in Austin today, Bush hoped to draw attention to an issue he feels is one of his strongest — and one of the Democratic presidential candidate’s weakest.
“Seven years in office, my opponent presides over a national tragedy,” Bush said. “Seventy percent of 4th graders in our highest poverty schools still cannot read and he’s offered little to do anything about it.”
School Spirit
Bush also announced the creation of a 50-state grass-roots “Educatorsfor Bush” coalition, bringing together teachers and school administrators from across the nation to spearhead his campaign in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Oregon, Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio.
Bush’s plan will focus on requiring increased accountability for schools and teachers, improving reading skills, and moving the Head Start early childhood learning program from the department of Health and Human Services to the Education Department.
“Vice President Gore offers more of the same,” Bush said. “He will not end the status quo, because he is the status quo. He offers the failed ideas of the past. I’m offering new ideas, ideas that are working.”
On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Bush brings his education message to the site of his greatest political embarrassment: New Hampshire, where Sen. John McCain beat him in the Republican primary by a nearly 20-point margin. In his concession speech that February night, Bush pledged he would return to the state after winning the Republican presidential nomination, and this trip keeps his promise. Earlier Tuesday, Bush will visit Portland, Maine.
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