Last night, the Bush campaign delivered the Kerry camp a nice little political present when the president denied having said of Osama bin Laden, in 2002, “I truly am not that concerned about him” -- practically forcing news channels to dredge up and play the clip in the days ahead. But on the domestic front, George W. Bush exhibited an even more pernicious form of denial, and his answer to a question about the minimum wage provided evidence of a different type of unconcern. That's because Bush appeared to be saying that the only reason people find themselves among the working poor is because they are too stupid to be anything else.
People are poor, according to Bush, not simply because they work low-wage jobs but because they have been held to low standards of education. And, he implied, they don't deserve to make any more until they can meet a higher standard.
This, it seems to me, is the sort of idea that can be arrived at only by a man who's been a lifelong beneficiary of family privilege, the effects of which he's somehow mistaken for evidence of his own superior merit and grit. It is the meritocratic fallacy laid bare and revealed as something more akin to our Calvinist, early American prejudices: that the talented will always rise, that wealth is a sign of being the elect of God, that the educated are always more deserving than those who are not.
Asked about raising the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour, which is now worth less, relatively, than at any time in 50 years, Bush quickly changed the subject. “But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to,” he said. “And that's to make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.” [emphasis added]
Now, certainly it's true that more educated people usually make more money, and that those with better educations at the elementary- and secondary-school levels are more likely to go on to college. But 63 percent of recent high-school graduates in America already enter college immediately after completing high school, and about 85 percent of Americans over age 25 have a high-school diploma, which is a higher percent than in the 1970s and '80s.
The issue posed to Bush is what can be done to help those without a college degree, a broad category that still encompasses about three-quarters of the population, in the here and now. Not all of these individuals earn the bare minimum, to be sure, but is raising the standards in American elementary schools what's really important to the earning potential of those who do? To their ability to feed and clothe their families? To their ability -- as opposed to their children's -- to find a decent-paying, health-care providing job?
Bush seems to think so. “Listen,” Bush continued, “the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. … You cannot solve a problem unless you diagnose the problem.”
But, to the extent that No Child Left Behind even does improve education, it's a jobs act for decades from now. In Bush's worldview, the American worker is never underpaid, just underqualified and undereducated. “You see,” said Bush, “We'll never be able to compete in the 21st century unless we have an education system that doesn't quit on children, an education system that raises standards, an education [system] that makes sure there's excellence in every classroom.”
It's hard to argue with that. But as in Bush's treatment of terrorism -- as an issue best addressed by invading Iraq in the service of transforming of the Middle East, rather than capturing bin Laden in the present -- his argument for the importance of education to the future American workforce does nothing to solve the problems faced by those who struggle to support their children today.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
