The Kids Left Behind
by Bob Herbert

He was going to be the education president, and during the campaign in 2000 he hugged kids from coast to coast, crowing about the education miracle in Texas and promising to spread the Texas model nationwide.

He said he was a different kind of Republican, a man of honor and compassion who would look out for the kids.

It was all smoke, of course — photo-ops in a cynical campaign. You knew it was smoke when the "compassionate" George W. Bush put Dick Cheney on the ticket, a former congressman who had voted against funding for Head Start, against subsidizing school lunches and against federal aid for college students.

In other words, against kids.
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