Thompson's Roll Out: No Candidate Left Behind
In part two of his campaign rollout in Iowa, Fred Thompson turned what was supposed to be a speech into an impromptu town hall.
The first question of the young campaign solicited a response on the former senator's well-known pro-life stance, and another resulted in him generally decrying gov't overspending and mismanagement. A third concerned whether Thompson could promise there would be no campaign commercials during the Superbowl (Thompson: "I promise free tickets for everyone to the Superbowl").
But then came a question that required Thompson to articulate a substantial policy response – something he had not been expected to do as a candidate-in-waiting.
Dennis Fett of Minden, IA asked the senator about No Child Left Behind, and immediately Thompson began lamenting the growing disparity in education indicators between the United States and countries like China and India. He then asserted that money isn't the answer, saying, "If federal funding was directly related to improvement in education, all of our kids would be Rhodes Scholars today."
But Thompson's message quickly eroded when he went on to tout federal grants to states as a solution. He decried states that lower standards in order to ensure continued federal funding, but then said that an alternative is for states to privatize testing standards and administration. But would this necessarily guarantee the "objective and transparent" testing practices that he hopes to achieve?
Asked afterwards what he thought about the answer Fett said he wished he could say he was satisfied. "I think I caught him by surprise," Fett said, "I'm a schoolteacher and I liken this to the first day of school. I think he needs to fine tune what his response is going to be."
Fett, who is also the publisher of "The Wacky World of Peafowls" book series, described himself as an independent who tended to be a conservative voter. He said he had attended several different campaign events this cycle, and he was currently trying to choose between Thompson and Rudy Giuliani. Fett described the choice between his two favorite candidates by saying, "The difference between him and Rudy is that Rudy is like my hero, but [Thompson] is like a Ronald Reagan [figure]." Fett's voter dilemma seems to be exactly the type that the Thompson camp is hoping for [Andy Merten and Adam Aigner-Treworgy].
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