171: Election
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Prologue
Ira Glass
As we head into the final days of this presidential race, consider this story. Matt Futterman was running for student government in Mamaroneck High School in New York in 1985. And he ran a campaign that changed electoral politics in the school, at least for a while. Here's the way the race lined up.
Matt Futterman
My opponent was a guy named [? Dave Levy, ?] who was a year older than I. He was going to be a senior, and he was running for this position. So you had to figure he was going to win that class. I was going to win my class. And then it was up to the freshmen who were going to decide the election.
Ira Glass
And it was not looking good for Matt with those key swing voters, the tough-to-please freshmen. And it came to the final days before the election, just as we are now, with this presidential race. And Matt turned to his best friend's brother, Bennett, for advice. And Bennett came up with this campaign slogan that turned the race around. Here's Bennett.
Bennett Miller
"Vote for Matt. He is good. He'll give you wood." Essentially, Matt would walk around Mamaroneck Public High School with an armful of various types of wood, twigs and sticks and lumber and such. And anybody who wanted wood would get a free sample of wood.
Ira Glass
Then Bennett had another idea. They could make a TV commercial. That's right, a TV commercial. Nobody had ever done a political TV ad in a high school race, at their school anyway. The school had TVs in every room. The school's morning announcements were done on these television monitors. They could play their ad during the morning announcements.
Matt Futterman
The next day, I met Ben at the beginning of lunch. And we went to the video room. And he signed out the cameras and tripod.
And we went out back to the parking lot. And I think he had brought some logs for me to hold. And the whole thing took about 15 minutes to film.
I'm standing there with wood. The shot opens. I'm there. I say, "Hi. I'm Matt Futterman. I'm running for Corresponding Secretary of the Executive Board."
Bennett Miller
I think maybe Matt said, "Vote for me. I am good. I'll give you wood."
Matt Futterman
Bennett has his arm around me. He's got a microphone in his hand. He pulls it back to his mouth. He looks very seriously into the camera, and he says--
Bennett Miller
I said, "What do you mean? You're going to give it away for free?" He says, "That's right, Bennett, absolutely for free. You want birch, I got birch. You want oak, I got oak. You want pine, you want twigs--"
Matt Futterman
"Oak, beech, maple, magnolia, linden."
Bennett Miller
"You want sticks, you want two-by-fours, I got it for you."
Matt Futterman
And Bennett looks very seriously into the camera and holds up a log and says, "redwood."
Ira Glass
Let me just ask you to describe-- just choose one word and describe-- OK, this ad airs for the first time during the morning announcements. Describe in one word the reaction from the school.
Bennett Miller
It would have to be fanaticism. And like pigeons to the bread-bearer, he was just swarmed upon by students from every grade wanting a piece of wood.
Matt Futterman
People were coming up for seconds, for thirds.
Bennett Miller
It was just like a Hail Mary touchdown.
Matt Futterman
And before I know it, I'm looking down in the bag. And I'm very quickly running out of wood. And I'm thinking, "I got to get some more wood."
Bennett Miller
It got to the point where he was giving away so much wood, there was such a demand to give away the wood, that he had to stop giving it away to seniors, because they didn't have the right to vote in school-wide elections.
Ira Glass
Did you have to modify the ad with a little, at the end, "Seniors not apply."
Bennett Miller
I believe the ad played one time.
Ira Glass
One time was enough, though. Come election day, Matt easily swept into office. And the next year, because of Matt's commercial, the age of televised politics hit Mamaroneck High full-force. Nearly all the candidates had TV ads.
And interestingly, nearly all of them were dreadfully dull. They went on TV, and they droned on about their qualifications and what they wanted to do for the school. It's as if they missed what it was that made Matt's ad so effective. Here's Bennett.
Bennett Miller
It appealed directly to what was most important to the students. And what was most important was not the traditionally defined offices and duties of an elected official. People did not care about the prom and about the track team's uniforms. What they cared about was being represented. And this sense of absurdity--
Ira Glass
The sense of absurdity in the ad.
Bennett Miller
--the sense of absurdity that Matt was willing to express in the ads does represent who they were.
Ira Glass
Which brings us to the current election. While it's true that we want candidates with whom we agree, more or less, on at least some of the so-called issues, I think we also want, or I want anyway-- and I don't think I'm alone in this-- some moment of spontaneity, of human joy, some "I'll give you wood" moment. It would make me feel like I could trust these guys.
The candidates know this, too. At this point in the evolution of focus-grouped, to poll-driven politics, they have absolutely learned that what we want is some moment that is not focus-grouped and poll-driven. So they go onto David Letterman. They go onto Jay Leno. They tell their little jokes. They try to charm, all to try to get outside the sound bites.
Outside the sound bites. Today on our program, driven by the same desperate impulse, we also try to escape the world of the sound bite. We have three different stories about parts of this selection that do not fit into the scripted, pre-planned soundbites that we'll be hearing from the candidates over the next few days.
Act One, Fools Rush In, where sound bites fear to tread. Jack Hitt reports on a multimillionaire who helped swing this winter's Michigan primary by trashing mainstream pols in a very un-focus-grouped way, and what he has planned for these next few days before the general election. Act Two, Take Out Your Number Two Pencil, in which we look at the issue behind the issue behind a sound bite. And if that's confusing, well, just stay with me. Act Three, Nepotism a Beginner's Guide, and a defense. Adam Davidson discovers that he has the same blue blood ancestors as George W. Bush and wonders where his family went wrong, and where the Bushes went right, and why it takes 220 years to get to the point where you get to say the sound bite.
From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And remember, for the next hour, I will fight for you. So stay with me.
Act One: Fools Rush In
Ira Glass
Act One: Fools Rush In. So in these days when we yearn for more of our politicians to shoot from the hip a little more than they do, Jack Hitt found somebody who fit the bill, a former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan. Jack tells the story.
Jack Hitt
Last February, I was sitting in the office of the multimillionaire Michigan trial lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. You'll remember he was Jack Kevorkian's lawyer. And he was also the lawyer who once walked into court carrying a big picture of the prosecutor, his opponent, with a clown nose pinned on. I was trying to figure out Fieger wins hundreds of millions of dollars while using tactics most people find outrageous, even insane. But I could barely get in a question, because it was just a few days away from the Michigan Republican primary, and Fieger was incensed George W. Bush might win.
Remember how it was last winter. Bush had just barely defeated John McCain in the South Carolina primary, and Michigan's governor, John Engler, had declared his state to be Bush's, quote, "firewall" against McCain. On that cold afternoon, Fieger's phone rang every two minutes. It was a couple of his pals, who were encouraging Fieger to make some negative ads attacking Bush in order to humiliate Governor Engler. Less than 24 hours later, Michigan voters began hearing Fieger's ad.
Geoffrey Fieger
Hi, this is Geoff Fieger. They're back. Listen to this.
Man 1
George W. Bush's record of results speaks for itself.
Woman 1
As governor, he demanded higher standards for schools--
Man 1
--fought trial lawyers over lawsuit abuse and beat them.
Geoffrey Fieger
What? When they say they ended lawsuit abuse, they mean we got screwed. Supporting--
Jack Hitt
The ad is a whole minute of in-your-face vitriol, right up to the sign-off.
Man 1
Paid for by Citizens against Dumb and Dumber.
Jack Hitt
Here's the catch: it worked. At least, George Bush thought it did. The day he lost Michigan, he was blaming Fieger, by name, for interfering in the Republican primary. Months later, with Michigan heading towards another incredibly close presidential contest, Fieger and his buddies decided to do it all over again, just one week before election day.
I hopped a plane and met with Fieger's pals, the guys who helped write these ads, Eric Humphrey, a radio producer, and Leon Weiss, a lawyer. I wanted to know, were they a PAC, a special interest group? What were they?
Eric Humphrey
The best description of us would be Jello. You can see it, but you just can't get your hands on it. It's like we're a loose-knit group of people who have some strong political beliefs. We do not represent the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party, or any other organization. I'd say that we're probably coffee outside of the cup. You just don't know what to do with us.
Jack Hitt
And they are coffee outside the cup. In this day of focus groups and marketing demographics and niches like suburban males, 18 to 24 years old, their idea of a target audience sounds totally antique.
Leon Weiss
Somebody who still has an open mind and maybe has a sense of humor.
Jack Hitt
They only do radio ads, in part because they're so effective in a state obsessed with cars and driving, and also because it's cheaper than one might think to get into the political game. On these ads, they might spend $20,000.
Leon Weiss
It's like a grain of sand on the beach.
Eric Humphrey
Absolutely.
Leon Weiss
$10,000 or $15,000 or maybe $20,000, as opposed to, what, $40 million, $50 million that they spend on television, especially in the last two months. So it's nothing. It's a mosquito on an elephant's hind quarter.
Jack Hitt
What do you think about the ads that the two candidates are running these days? What are the ads like here in Michigan?
Eric Humphrey
They are totally ridiculous. It is sickening.
Leon Weiss
And boring.
Eric Humphrey
And boring. I want to literally throw my television set out of the window. You've got negative ads against George Bush from Al Gore. You've got George Bush with negative ads against Al Gore. Then you've got Al Gore and George Bush both sitting in classrooms, hugging little black children.
I mean, c'mon. Knock it off. Tell us something.
Jack Hitt
By late afternoon, we had adjourned to the offices of WJR Radio in Detroit to work further on the scripts, when there was a commotion. Feiger swept into the studio like a conquering hero, dressed in an expensive blue pinstripe suit and muted red tie. He looked like Bush or Gore during the first debate, except for his hair, shaggy '70s retro. He was obviously still high from the euphoria one must experience from asking a jury for $150 million dollars and knowing you might get it.
Once Fieger took his seat in front of the studio microphone, Eric and Leon became noticeably more subdued, a typical moment. Eric had come up with a new line for Fieger.
Geoffrey Fieger
Well, let's do that. Write that out.
Eric Humphrey
OK.
Geoffrey Fieger
You could write that out right now. I like that.
Eric Humphrey
I am.
Geoffrey Fieger
But you got to have a lot more than just that. That's about 10 seconds.
Eric Humphrey
OK.
Geoffrey Fieger
Go.
Eric Humphrey
Talk about Al-- OK. I gave you one pen. I gave him the other one.
Leon Weiss
Here's your pen back. No, you can't have my pen back.
Jack Hitt
Ah, the creative process. So Feiger took his pen back.
Geoffrey Fieger
Just a minute.
Jack Hitt
I thought by coming to WJR, what I would witness was the contemporary making of a Willie Horton ad, the most famous attack ad in contemporary politics, not officially sanctioned by either party, and so, able to put out a distorted, racist message about Michael Dukakis in 1988. But all day long, I was amazed to witness an unusual integrity on display. Fieger and his pals wanted to ridicule Bush viciously, but they were sort of prissy about it, surprisingly concerned that everything in the ad be true. When Leon wanted a line saying "Texas leads the country in water pollution," Eric struck it, arguing that Texas was only 49th. Again, here's Fieger.
Geoffrey Fieger
The general political ads that are out there are horrible, just absolutely horrible. They're an insult to my intelligence, because they're lies, generally lies, just out-and-out complete lies. Our ads, frankly, are impeccably researched and empirically correct.
Jack Hitt
There was a kind of internal logic even to the boundaries of their own bad taste. A Monica Lewinsky ad? No. A bunch of bad Jewish jokes about how Lieberman would save the country money by buying wholesale? Nixed. At one point, Geoffrey started scribbling madly on a yellow legal pad and then told everyone to hush. He said he'd had a divine inspiration and wanted to try out a new ad concept.
Geoffrey Fieger
Hi, this is Jesus Christ. And I'm a little pissed. I said, "Thou shall not kill." What don't you understand about that? For example, George W. Bush. He's got a death toll higher than Slobodan Milosevic. And you guys want to make him the most powerful man in the world? Are you nuts? Vote for Bush and piss off the Lord.
Eric Humphrey
Oh, cut it out. Cut it out.
Leon Weiss
Piss off the Lord.
Jack Hitt
What was amazing about the whole experience was how much fun they were all having. It's hard to capture the madness and pleasure that filled the room. Obviously, it was mean-spirited, but it's a pleasure you almost never see in our formal public politics.
Geoffrey Fieger
I don't think anyone has fun. But everything that we do, at least me, I can't speak for everybody else, it's only interesting for me if I have fun. Now for some reason, the idea of fun in this whole thing is either not accepted or rejected, or looked down upon. I don't know why. But I'll tell you that that's the way I feel about everything that I do.
I mean life is so short. I just looked around, and I was 18 years old. And I'm 49, going on 50. Man, that's so fast. If you don't have fun, what's your excuse for being?
Jack Hitt
Isn't this the kind of unscripted spirit most of us say is missing from our mainstream politicians? While it's easy to do this from the sidelines, the question is, can you have this much fun if you're the candidate and then go on to win? In fact, Fieger ran for governor in 1998 and lost. He lost, in large part, because his opponent reminded voters that Fieger regularly said shocking things, like the time he referred to Jesus as, quote, "just some goofball that got nailed to the cross."
If you ask Fieger about it, he'll tell you it's taken out of context. But I've read the full quote. And it's pretty bad. He says believing in Jesus is just as silly as Elvis mania. People had a reason to be insulted.
And that's the problem with shoot-from-the-hip politics. And yet, maybe the whole experience made him a little more careful. Over the course of two hours, he calls every soul who passes the glass window into the studio.
Geoffrey Fieger
Go bring that girl in here. And I want to see what she thinks of it.
Eric Humphrey
I don't know where she is.
Geoffrey Fieger
Just go ask. They'll get her.
Leon Weiss
And to every one, he plays his "Hi, this is Jesus Christ" ad.
Geoffrey Fieger
Hi. This is Jesus Christ. And I'm a little pissed.
Jack Hitt
Every time, it cracks everybody up. And every time, Leon and Eric try to talk him out of it.
Man 2
You're crazy.
Man 3
Rejected.
Man 4
Rejected.
Man 2
Rejected.
Eric Humphrey
Right now, you've got the Jews, the blacks, and the Catholics all over your ass.
Jack Hitt
And this is the one time I watch them oppose Fieger on a big issue and actually convince him. After two and a half hours, they finish two 60-second ads complete with sound effects and music. "We're like the Beatles," Fieger says. Here's one of the ads.
Geoffrey Fieger
Hi, this is Geoff Fieger. George W. Bush has never accomplished anything on his own in his entire life. Let's take a look.
Man 5
You don't have the qualifications for Yale, my boy.
Man 6
My daddy's George Bush.
Man 5
Welcome to Yale, my boy.
Woman 2
You don't have the qualifications for Harvard Business School.
Man 6
My daddy's George Bush.
Jack Hitt
His ads sound highly produced and planned out, yet the whole process was so improvisational. And Fieger himself is completely unreflective, to the point that when I kept asking him to talk about the strategy of the ad, he got a little mad at me.
Geoffrey Fieger
We don't give a damn. We just do it.
Jack Hitt
And who, in your mind, whose vote do you think you're swaying?
Geoffrey Fieger
I don't know. I'm telling you, if it's possible--
Jack Hitt
How do you think this reacts on somebody who hears it?
Geoffrey Fieger
I don't know. You're asking me to analyze this, and then be absolutely serious and intellectually delve into the thing. And I don't do that. It would ruin the spontaneity. And let me just tell you this, OK? That's why it's so good.
Jack Hitt
The political ads that Fieger makes are the ones we voters allegedly find the most horrifying, unaccountable attacks not affiliated with any candidate saying the worst possible things. And I wondered if the populist part of Fieger might think there's something wrong with the idea that any rich guy can get on the air and take potshots at any politician he wants. But I was wrong.
Fieger thinks there should be more of these ads, that everyone should get in on the game. And when he told me this, I realized that what Fieger's up to isn't part of the new wave of negative advertising, but actually is connected to something very old-fashioned in American politics, the pure public glee of calling the other side names.
This is the way it always was. In 1884, the fact that Grover Cleveland had had a child out of wedlock had Republicans marching down the street, delightedly singing, "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" And Democrats would shout back, "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha."
Jack Hitt
It does seem like you're all having a lot of fun in there.
Geoffrey Fieger
Anything we do, it's got to be fun.
Leon Weiss
That's why it's so good. If it's not fun, we wouldn't do it.
Jack Hitt
Do you think they're having fun over at the Gore campaign tonight?
Eric Humphrey
No. They're talking about prescription drugs and Social Security and $1,500 and $30,000 and $20,000.
Geoffrey Fieger
We just have fun. We have fun. It's fun. That's what it is.
Jack Hitt
How many people have you heard, just today, say, "I can't wait until this damn election is over"? Everybody hates it. There is no joy in our politics, no pleasure. No one's laughing, except, it seems, Geoffrey Fieger, who's having a ball, and now signs all of his ads with his trademark bellowing laugh.
Man 1
Paid for by the Committee against Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.
[LAUGHTER]
Ira Glass
Jack Hitt lives in Connecticut. Coming up, how many grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents do you have to have with the middle names Herbert and Walker for you to become president yourself? You ain't seen nothing yet. In a minute, from Public Radio International, when our program continues.
Act Two: What We Talk About When We Talk About The Issues
Ira Glass
It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Outside the Sound Bites, in which we try to avoid, sidestep, or look beneath the presidential candidates' talking points in these final days before the election. We've arrived at Act Two of our show, Take Out Your Number Two Pencil.
One thing that is striking about this presidential race is that the two big issues, that the two big candidates debate most, are two things that most of us do not really understand at all, prescription drug policy and school accountability. And so the candidates throw their little catchwords back and forth. And how are we supposed to evaluate that? It is as if we're supposed to choose between them based on their stances on Fermat's Last Theorem. So our producer, Alex Blumberg, looked behind what they have to say about education, and found that the reality is dismayingly different from their little speeches.
Alex Blumberg
There are differences, fairly big ones, between the Bush and Gore education plans. Gore wants more money for early childhood education and teacher training. Bush wants vouchers for families in failing schools. But at the heart of both their education plans is the idea that kids should be tested and tested often, to be sure they're being taught well.
Al Gore
Look, we agree on a couple of things on education. I strongly support new accountability. So does Governor Bush. I'm in favor of testing as a way of measuring performance, every school, every school district. Have every state test the children. I've also proposed--
George W. Bush
We're going to say, if you receive federal money, measure third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, and show us whether or not children are learning to read and write and add and subtract. And if so, there'll be a bonus plan, instead of continuing to subsidize failure. Testing is the cornerstone of reform. You know how I know?
Alex Blumberg
In the first presidential debate, the only argument about tests was who had more of them, and whose were tougher on kids and teachers.
Al Gore
Well, first of all, I do have mandatory testing. I think the governor may not have heard what I said clearly. All schools, all school districts, students themselves, and required teacher testing, which goes a step farther than Governor Bush has been willing to go.
Alex Blumberg
North Carolina is one of a handful of states in the country that's already adopted an education plan similar to what both candidates are talking about. It's called the ABC program, and it's based on the same simple premise both candidates propose. We hold schools accountable for teaching our kids. The schools that do well, we reward. The ones that don't, we demand changes. And the way we tell, a standardized test.
I talked to teachers from five schools across the state. And what they said is the reality isn't as simple as the campaign rhetoric makes it seem, and that North Carolina's accountability program has consequences, both good and bad, that interestingly, neither candidate seems to mention.
Alex Blumberg
So how many tests have you taken this year?
Boy
About four, the computer competency test, the end of quarter test, the reading end of quarter test, and there was a practice computer competency test.
Alex Blumberg
And what's the date today?
Boy
October 18.
Alex Blumberg
Kids in North Carolina take a lot of tests. In some schools, as many as 30 days out of the year are given over to tests. And the most important tests of all, the tests everyone talks about, the tests from which all other tests originate, are called the EOGs, or End-of-Grade tests. Every kid from third grade to eighth grade takes them.
Nearly all the teachers I talked to said that a lot has improved since North Carolina started its educational reforms in 1996. There's a new curriculum, which the teachers like. Teacher salaries have increased. And more resources are going to early childhood programs. But when talking about the EOGs, a lot of the teachers use words like frenzy, mania, or in some cases monster.
That's because a lot is riding on the EOGs. School scores are published in local papers and on the internet. They show up in real estate listings. Principals of chronically low-performing schools can be fired. Teachers at schools that score well on the tests or show marked improvement receive bonuses that go as high as $1,500 per teacher.
But teachers have enough questions about the testing that some of them have turned down the money when it's offered. And in North Carolina's fifth year of reform, the issues have heated up enough that many educators get edgy talking about it publicly. One state official hung up on me in the middle of a conversation. At a school in Hallsboro, the principal, Lynn Spaulding wouldn't let me talk to any of his teachers without him being present. And then there's Teresa Glenn.
Teresa Glenn
My name is Teresa Glenn. I teach eighth grade language arts and social studies. And I've been teaching for three and a half years.
Alex Blumberg
And where do you teach?
Teresa Glenn
I teach in Montgomery County, North Carolina, which is in the south-central part of North Carolina.
Alex Blumberg
All right. And are you in school right now?
Teresa Glenn
No, I'm not in school.
Alex Blumberg
And why is that?
Teresa Glenn
I'm serving a suspension for discussing the North Carolina End-of-Grade tests.
Alex Blumberg
On May 28 of this year, Teresa Glenn posted an impassioned email message to a North Carolina educational list server, hosted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. In nine paragraphs, she outlined her various concerns with the EOGs. In the last one, she summarized.
Teresa Glenn
And the last paragraph, I talked about some of the things I saw last year with my students. And I said, "I apologize if anyone is offended by any of the above. I'm personally offended by the EOG tests.
I've seen students, good, solid, A, B students crying because of the tests. I've seen students who work hard but lack the native intelligence to pass a two-hour multiple choice test retained. I've seen teachers do nothing for the last 6 to 10 weeks of school but work on EOG preparation.
I've seen teachers publicly humiliated because they had lower test scores than the year before. I've seen children made fun of, called names, and put down based on their EOG scores. I've seen teachers look down their noses because a child is a three, three on the EOG test and not a three, four. The entire spectacle is disgusting."
Alex Blumberg
The part of the email that got her in trouble was the part where she discussed the specific content of two questions on last year's reading EOG. She pointed out that the two questions required students to know information that wasn't in the reading passage they were supposedly being tested on. Not long after that email, her principal called her into his office and told her the state was considering revoking her teaching certificate.
Teresa Glenn
To be perfectly honest with you, I was absolutely floored. And my principal called me. And I really like my principal. I think he's a very upstanding man.
He called me into his office and said, "Did you say something on an email forum about the tests this year?" And I said, "Of course I did." And maybe I'm just naive, but it didn't occur to me that you can get in trouble for discussing the shortcomings of these tests, particularly when they are almost life and death, at least academically, for students. So I was very surprised.
Alex Blumberg
They eventually told Teresa that she'd violated an agreement she'd signed as part of the testing program that forbade her from paraphrasing any of the questions on the test in public. Teresa says the only reason she was allowed to keep your job, and got away with just a suspension, was that one of the local school board members present at her hearing owed her a favor. She says the big problem with the tests is how much time and resources have been diverted to them.
Some teachers in her school, she says, spend 50% to 75% of their classroom time on test prep. A huge chunk of the school's book budget has gone to buying four different test prep books for each student. She says no wonder administrators are so touchy.
Teresa Glenn
The amount of money that's been poured into this is immense. If somebody says, "This is not working. And you just wasted $500 million dollars on this program that's actually hurting kids," you have to think that there's going to be some kind of serious ramification for that person.
Alex Blumberg
And you think that's what's happening, that $500 million has been poured into a program that's hurting kids?
Teresa Glenn
Well, I just got something yesterday in the mail from the Department of Public Instruction sort of bragging that somewhere over $100 million had been handed out in bonuses this year alone to teachers who were at these schools that have made the biggest gains.
Alex Blumberg
What do you make of that?
Teresa Glenn
Well, on the personal level, it depresses me, because I've been asking still for the same two novel sets for the last two years, and I haven't gotten them.
Alex Blumberg
Are you serious?
Teresa Glenn
Yes.
Alex Blumberg
What are you trying to get?
Teresa Glenn
I just want Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, who actually lives here in North Carolina. I just want 30 copies of it. And then there's another novel that I'd like, the Jon Krakauer Into Thin Air. That's the book about the climb to Mount Everest.
The kids would love that. They would be totally into it. Because it's gory enough that they'd be interested in it too. That's all I want in my pitiful life as an eighth grade teacher. And I don't foresee myself getting it.
And I know we talk about high standards, but in my mind, just teaching students to answer multiple choice questions is about the lowest standard I can possibly imagine. That's not the same thing as having the skills to live a productive life in a democratic society. I think we're robbing the students of what education should be, which is a love of knowledge and the ability to pursue gaining more knowledge as you want to. And we're saying that the purpose of education is to pass these tests.
Alex Blumberg
When I asked the North Carolina State Board of Education for a school where their plan was working, they sent me to Allenbrook Elementary in Charlotte. It's in a poor neighborhood and has a history of poor performance on the tests. Four years ago, the state assistance team came to Allenbrook to help it improve, the kind of thing Al Gore would like to see adopted everywhere.
Al Gore
If it's a failing school, shut it down and reopen it under a new principal with a turnaround team of specialists, the way Governor Jim Hunt does in North Carolina. If it's a--
Alex Blumberg
Actually, they don't shut the school down. But there was a team of specialists. And 70% of the staff either quit or was transferred. And the principal was removed. Cathy Hammond was his replacement. And under her leadership, the school has made remarkable gains on the test scores. And she readily credits the accountability program.
Cathy Hammond
I think our state is doing a phenomenal job of addressing the needs in education. When I taught, and I taught for 16 years in a middle school, I never had an administrator ask me, "Why are you teaching that? What is it you want your children to know that they didn't know before you started?" No one cared. As long as the children were in the room, everyone was quiet, the parents were happy, I could've been teaching leapfrog. So I like the idea that we have a set of standards that all children need to know, and that we're responsible for teaching them.
Alex Blumberg
Here's what they found when they tried to fix the school. First, the problem wasn't the teachers' ability. The state team evaluated all the teachers, and only one was rated below competent. The problem was there simply weren't enough of them, especially for the task of bringing Allenbrook's student population up to grade level. For whatever sociological reasons, kids from poor neighborhoods tend to do worse in school and worse on standardized tests. You can bring them up to speed, but you need extra teachers to do it.
Cathy Hammond
If you have a child that's coming to you that's coming out of an environment where they have not had a bed to sleep in, they've lost their parent for whatever reason, to incarceration or anything else, what do we as a school do about it in order to put support in for that child and that family? You cannot do that without adequate staff. You can't do that in a classroom with 25 children and one teacher.
Alex Blumberg
Which raises the question, did the state need a test to fix Allenbrook School? Principal Hammond says what actually improved things was extra money, which she used to hire more reading teachers and a full-time social worker and a school psychologist. Why bother with the test? Why not just supply that?
Cathy Hammond
We know enough about how children learn and how children are successful to fix every school in America. It comes down to the question, do we have the will to do it, and are we willing to put the resources in the places that need them. I am not opposed to accountability. I think accountability is a great thing. I think sometimes we get carried away with the way we measure accountability, because it's more complex than a score on a test.
Alex Blumberg
If what comes out of the national debate, say, is that the only thing that we need to make our schools better is a tough national test for everybody?
Cathy Hammond
It scares me. It frustrates me that people think it's a simple fix, that we don't spend time talking about what does work. And one of the reasons we don't want to talk about what does work is because it takes a different level of commitment. It takes a different level of resources. And it takes a different kind of dialogue than a statement like, "I'm going to fix all of the schools in America."
Phil Kirk
She is maybe unintentionally proving our point, that if it had not been for the ABC Program and Allenbrook being embarrassed about being on the front page of The Charlotte Observer, the local community would have never put those additional resources in.
Alex Blumberg
This is Phil Kirk, Chairman of the North Carolina State Board of Education, and one of the two guys in charge of the ABC Program.
Phil Kirk
Allenbrook would not have ever gotten those additional resources if the ABC Program hadn't embarrassed the school board. So she's made our point better than I could have.
Alex Blumberg
Phil Kirk says that he agrees with Principal Hammond, that it's harder to teach kids from poor backgrounds. You need more resources, more staff. He says he's gotten those things for poor schools, and he's trying to get even more. But the political reality is it's easier to get money from a state legislature if you can show them results.
Phil Kirk
If we didn't have ABC, we wouldn't be getting the additional resources for the low-performing schools. I believe that strongly. The state's investing a lot of money in the schools, and they want teachers to be more accountable. And we're not going to back off accountability.
Alex Blumberg
A lot of teachers complain that politicians and people from the state use the language of business when talking about education. And many people are suspicious of the fact that Kirk is head of both the State Board of Education and the State Chamber of Commerce, in other words, the main education lobby and the main business lobby. But it's entirely possible that the same business vocabulary that raises suspicions among teachers is the very thing that makes him successful at getting money out of the legislature.
He puts the concerns of education in language the legislature understands. Still, he can be pretty abrasive. He describes teachers who don't like the tests this way.
Phil Kirk
They want business as usual. They can come up with every whiny excuse that they want to. But if anybody thinks their whining and complaining is going to cause us to get weak-kneed as we end social promotion and put in an exit exam, they've got another thought coming, because it's not going to happen.
Kathy Rouse
This is a letter that I received. And it's a report of student performance on the second retest with the North Carolina Integrated Test.
Alex Blumberg
Cathy Rouse's youngest son, Carlton, was in third grade last year at Hallsboro-Artesia Elementary School. He got A's and B's. But he didn't pass his EOGs at the end of the year. And then he failed his two allowed retests, which meant he had to repeat third grade.
Cathy Rouse
I told him that I went to the school, and what the teacher had told me, that he hadn't passed. And I said, that means that they'll hold you back. And he cried hot tears. And he asked me, "Mama, what's wrong with me?" And that right there, that was it. It's more than a reading problem. That, to me, is the beginning of the onslaught on our children's psyche.
Alex Blumberg
Cathy protested and put her case before the county board, and finally had Carlton promoted. He's in fourth grade this year. Between 1991 and 1997, 66 studies were done on holding kids back. 65 of them showed it to be either ineffectual or damaging in the long run. And a lot of times, it's just not necessary. Even in schools that start aggressive remediation in kindergarten, it's common not to see higher test scores until seventh or eighth grade. Third grade is just too early to tell if things are working. To Cathy Rouse, this is just common sense.
Cathy Rouse
No test or anyone, especially anyone considering themselves an educator, can indicate what you're going to be when you're eight years old. We do not begin to categorize our children at eight years old, and stamp them and have them believe at eight years old that there's something wrong with them.
And I told them, I don't know where I have to go. But I will not have that done to my child. I will not have him see himself as less than. Because seriously at eight years old, that's criminal. There are studies and all that on that, how much self-image and self-perception plays into learning.
Alex Blumberg
Even among teachers who think the tests have made education better in North Carolina, like math teacher [? Mary Ann ?] Davis, this is a big worry. Not everyone will pass the tests. In the worst schools, over half the kids fail. Even in the very best, it's 10%. What happens to those kids?
Mary Ann Davis
?] Perhaps we are just assuming a higher level of competency than is possible for all children.
Alex Blumberg
What's the danger of that for the kids?
Mary Ann Davis
?] The danger of that is that we're asking them to be something that they just can't be. Putting a child at a desk with a chair and saying, "We're going to test you over and over until you can pass this, until you get it right," it's just not always going to happen. That's what I'm saying.
To expect that every child in the state of North Carolina is going to reach a level three or four so that they can be promoted and so they can graduate is an unrealistic expectation. And having that unrealistic expectation is not fair to the children. We're taking it out on the kids, when it's not always the kids' fault.
And that's sad. We shouldn't do that to children. That's abusive.
Alex Blumberg
This gets us to the crux of what Governor Bush might call "a difference in philosophy," the philosophy of teaching. How much should you demand results from students, on the one hand, versus how much you should nurture them on the other. Phil Kirk and the state legislature think things went too far towards nurture, and that it's time to go back the other way.
Phil Kirk
A lot of the liberal-thinking people are more worried about self-esteem than they are about whether children can read and write. We don't buy that line.
Alex Blumberg
At a school assembly in the Jefferson Elementary School gymnasium, I saw this philosophical divide for the gulf it truly is. Jefferson Elementary is set in a Winston-Salem suburb, filled with mature oaks and sprawling split-levels. Inside the school's carpeted classrooms, kids sit around work tables, not at desks, and quietly read or write in journals. Their art hangs from the walls, right above the height-appropriate bookshelves, next to the hamster cages and various aquaria.
Jefferson Elementary does very well on the EOGs, and today's assembly is because people from the state are here to congratulate them for it. Last year, for the first time, over 90% percent of Jefferson students scored above average on the EOGs, making it what the state calls "a school of excellence." Dr. Brad Sneeden, one of the state administrators, explains what this means.
Brad Sneeden
What has to be added to all that powerful leadership, that powerful teaching, that powerful nurturing, that powerful participation by others? What does it take to really get a school to a school of excellence? It takes you, doesn't it? It takes you to decide, "I'm here to learn." And you have done that. You're leaders. You are a leader. You're setting the stage. And we want many, many more to follow.
Alex Blumberg
Keep in mind, the group of leaders being addressed here is an auditorium full of schoolchildren with missing teeth and those gym shoes that light up. They're sitting cross-legged on the floor. And the shy ones are leaning against their teachers. Whatever message is reaching them from all this, it's probably not the one the speakers are intending. Witness this failed call-and-response attempt from Dr. Martin, the second presenter.
Dr. Martin
Now you all heard Dr. Sneeden. You all heard Dr. Sneeden speak about responsibility for doing your work. Remember, he said the final ingredient, after we have capable administrators, excellent teachers. I believe he used the word powerful teachers. The final ingredient is you guys, right? And so it takes responsibility for you doing your work and learning.
Now, where's the third grade? Third grade, why don't you guys stand up, because you're going to be taking the test this year for the first time. You'll be a part. So all of you are going to do what? Take responsibility. Good. All right. You guys can have a seat.
Alex Blumberg
Then Dr. Moser, Jefferson's principal, took the stage. He's an easy guy to love. He's sweet and soft-spoken and, if anything, a little embarrassed about this assembly. He readily admits that a large part of the reason his students score so well on the EOGs is simply that they come from well-off families. And when he addresses the students, he doesn't mention responsibility or leadership. It's all nurturing.
Dr. Moser
You all look so good. And it's always nice to get to look straight at you every day. Boys and girls, you know that we're very proud of you. We're proud of the work you do every day.
Teachers, I couldn't be more proud of the relationship and the atmospheres in your classrooms that allow our children to come every day and have a good experience here at school. You do a great job taking care of our boys and girls. And that's very important. And I think it's time for lunch.
[CHEERING]
Alex Blumberg
What's obvious is that each philosophy comes with its own language, the language of leadership versus the language of lunch. And each language emphasizes different things. In the teacher's lounge after the assembly, I'm swamped by teachers who are angry about the testing and how heavily it's being emphasized and how high the stakes are now. If the two competing impulses in American education are accountability on the one hand versus nurturing on the other, the consensus of these teachers and all the teachers I talked to across the state, is that obviously, you need both.
And even if the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of nurturing in the past, what George Bush and Al Gore are both proposing is to push it far in the other direction. What's needed is balance, the teachers said. But whichever man wins, that's probably not what we're going to see.
Ira Glass
Alex Blumberg.
Act Three: Nepotism: A Beginner's Guide
Ira Glass
Act Three. So before we end our little election special, let's have a quick word about nepotism. In this country, where supposedly anybody can grow up to be president, we have one candidate who was raised in Washington, DC, son of a US senator, the other guy son of a president. And it's confusing to some of us, especially our contributor, Adam Davidson, who discovered recently that he and George Bush share six, that's right, six common ancestors, all of whom lived in 17th century England. Adam is wondering, how did this happen?
Adam Davidson
Where did my side of the dynasty go wrong? And what did his side do so right? Why did he get the presidential nomination handed to him, and I have to borrow money from my girlfriend to pay the rent?
I think it's probably true that George W. Bush is not all that bright. But he knows something, his whole family knows something. They know power. And they know how to get more and more power every generation.
Gary Boyd Roberts
Well, Adam, you and George Bush are both descended from Experience Mitchell. And from the sister of Experience Mitchell was descended the late Princess of Wales.
Adam Davidson
Presidential genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts.
Gary Boyd Roberts
And so you, Prince William, and George Bush Senior and Junior are all about 9th or 10th cousins of each other through this one forebear. So this is a matter of one set of sixth to eighth cousins becoming social registerite American leaders, and the others remaining in small towns or small cities. And the ugly term for is quote, quote, "Swamp Yankee."
Adam Davidson
This is Gary Boyd Roberts's favorite game. He loves linking people. For him, there are no distant cousins. Mention any New England name, and he'll link them right up to queens and kings, to the Mayflower, to you, to me, to himself.
He's a great genealogist. And he told me we could find out exactly where the Bushes went right and where my family went wrong.
It all goes back to 1783, when my folks had a better piece of land than George's. That's where things started going south. It seems that the Bushes were forced to move out of town that year to get better farmland, while my family stayed put.
Gary Boyd Roberts
Well, you see, these are people staying roughly-- I mean they may go five or six towns away-- but they stay in the Plymouth area from 1620 until 1886. That is 250 years.
Adam Davidson
Staying in the same small town.
Gary Boyd Roberts
Staying in the same spot. Whereas the world was moving elsewhere, meaning economic development and serious cities and finance and education had long since moved out of Plymouth.
Adam Davidson
And just missed out on opportunities.
Gary Boyd Roberts
Maybe that economic deprivation didn't force them to go anywhere.
Adam Davidson
So they might have been just successful enough not to become incredibly successfully.
Gary Boyd Roberts
Just successful enough not to feel they wanted to move, exactly.
Adam Davidson
So let me recap this for you. The Bushes were our poor cousins. They weren't doing that well, so they decided to go somewhere else.
The move started a tradition. Each successive generation went to wherever the next big thing was, first to Vermont for a better farm, then to Ohio for steel, Wall Street for finance, and eventually, Texas for oil. And it only took a little bit of wealth to make everything a lot easier.
Gary Boyd Roberts
You see, they use the prep schools. They use Yale. They use the whole summer connection to meet wives, which means a kind of use of the social register world. And they instill senses of duty and sportsmanship and fair play, but they also introduce this issue, call it sense of entitlement, which many people have labeled smugness in the candidates or whatever. And they've now been in the forefront of American politics for about three generations.
Adam Davidson
Each generation, starting in the 1800s, would make the family a little richer, a little more blue blood, and then would use their money and friends to create a network of political allies. And only once that network was in place do they run for office. All the Bushes do this.
Prescott Bush got richer than his dad on Wall Street, then made friends, then went to the Senate. George Herbert Walker Bush got even richer in Texas, then made even more friends, then became president. George W. hopes he'll do the exact same thing.
All the while, my family stayed. And each generation, the family land got smaller. Their only friends were other farmers. So when things finally got bad enough that they had to leave, about 100 years ago, the only place to go was a blue collar job in the city. By then, our family went from being the Bushes' superiors to being nothing but Swamp Yankee trash, while our poor Bush cousins stopped having to work so hard.
Adam Bellow
Now, what makes the Bushes interesting is that they have, like all dynastic families, a mythology, and a set of traditions and values that they pass on from one generation to the next.
Adam Davidson
This is Adam Bellow. He's writing a book about nepotism. His father is Saul Bellow, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Adam Bellow
And in the Bush family, it's considered important to be, or to appear to be, a self-made man. Therefore, the younger Bush, George Senior, George Herbert Walker Bush, likes to tell the story that he, after graduating from Yale, got into his car with his wife and his infant son, George Junior, and drove off to Texas to get into the oil business. He doesn't mention that he used his father's connections to start an oil company. And the same thing is true, of course, of his son, George Junior, and Jeb Bush.
Adam Davidson
Not that Adam Bellow thinks there's anything wrong with that. Nepotism is not good. It's not bad. It's how the world works. Only in America does anyone get upset about this, anyway. Because ever since Benjamin Franklin filled his Poor Richard's Almanac with advice on how to be prosperous, there's been this idea that anyone can make it here with pluck and hard work.
Adam Bellow
Franklin was a man of the middle class.
Adam Davidson
A self-made man.
Adam Bellow
A self-made man. And interestingly, when he became Postmaster General of the colonies, in the 1730s, he gave all the jobs that he had under his control, in all the 13 colonies, to his relatives. All the postmasters in all the colonies were nephews and cousins and relatives of Ben Franklin, and he moved them around at will. And when one of them died, he would give the job to another relative. And this is the great self-made man of American history.
Adam Davidson
It sounds like what you're saying is not only do the wealthy know how to use it better and have more raw material with which to work, but they also are the only part of our society that doesn't have a stigma against it, or at least is very happy to overcome that stigma. And so I wonder if it would be good for us to open up America to nepotism, to say here today, everybody use it, use it all you can, and let's make this a major tool in getting everybody the best advantage they can.
Adam Bellow
Where I come down on this is that it's never going away. Studies of the labor market, that is, how people get jobs, indicate that most people continue to get jobs through their relatives. It is just the way things are done.
Adam Davidson
Adam Bellow has been studying nepotism for years. And he hasn't found any level of society, anywhere in the world, that doesn't use it. So how do you feel good about yourself when you're sitting there in that nice office that you didn't really earn? Well for one thing, says Adam Bellow, you can have some humility about how you got the job. And you can work your ass off. You can work so hard that you earn the privilege that you lucked into.
Take the two George Bushes. Elizabeth Mitchell, who wrote W: the Revenge of the Bush Dynasty, told me that they both say they are self-made men. And they're both obviously fooling themselves. Their families gave them tremendous head starts.
When George Herbert Walker Bush, the father, the former president, moved to Odessa, Texas, and worked the lowest jobs at an oil company, painting rigs and handling supplies, the company he worked for was Dresser Industries. It was owned by his father's best friend and Yale roommate, Neil Mallon. In fact, Senator Prescott Bush gave the company to Mallon to run.
George Senior worked hard, and he ultimately started his own business. He was actually kind of brilliant. He was a pioneer in offshore drilling. When he became rich, richer than his dad, he earned it.
Now take his son. When George W. drove to Midland, Texas, right after graduating from Yale, he went straight to his father's best friend, his father's former campaign manager, Jimmy Allison, who set him up in a low-level oil industry job. That went nowhere. Then he ran for Congress, lost, and then started a huge oil company himself.
He didn't start at the bottom. He just called his uncle, Jonathan Bush, who quickly raised the money to create Arbusto. The primary funder was Philip Uzielli, James Baker's best friend and college roommate, a man who said he knew he probably wouldn't make any money, but felt loyal to W's dad. Sure enough, Arbusto went belly-up.
George W. went on to get family friends to buy him two other oil companies that also went bankrupt. He didn't have any money, no successes to be proud of. And that is when his dad's pal, Bill DeWitt, invited him to become a co-owner and the CEO of the Texas Rangers. George W. had to borrow money to buy in, because he was broke.
People say he did do a good job with the Rangers. He got taxpayers to give $135 million for a new stadium. And he finally made himself and his dad's friends some money.
In tracing the Bush family tree, I found that every single generation since 1780 has found new ways to make money and gain power. They were visionaries. They figured out what the next big thing would be, and then they took risks and reaped the rewards. And my family didn't.
Bush's family has been working towards this Tuesday's election carefully and steadily for the last 220 years, while we Swamp Yankees have been watching it on TV. And at some level, it doesn't seem unfair. The only thing that bothers me is that they're sending in George W. to take the big prize.
He hasn't been a visionary or a risk-taker. If he'd followed the family tradition, he'd have gone to Silicon Valley and started a dot com. Instead, he entered the west Texas oil business when it was on its way out, and was bailed out repeatedly by family and friends. And he could be our next president. Or we'll get the other guy, the son of the senator from Tennessee.
Ira Glass
Adam Davidson lives in Los Angeles.
Credits
Ira Glass
Well, our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Blue Chevigny and Julie Snyder, contributing editors Paul Tough, Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, Alix Spiegel, Nancy Updike, and consigliere Sarah Vowell. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production help from Todd Bachmann, [? Eric Haverston, ?] and the amazing Hillary Frank. Musical help from Mr. John Connors, also Marika Partridge and Terry Hecker.
[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]
This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.
[FUNDING CREDITS]
WBEZ management by Torey Malatia, who believes above all in sharing.
Leon Weiss
Here's your pen back. No, you can't have my pen back.
Ira Glass
I'm Ira Glass. Don't forget to vote. God bless you, and God bless America.
Announcer
PRI, Public Radio International.
![Thanks Torey Thanks as always to our program's co-founder Torey Malatia](/sites/all/modules/custom/tal_transcript/images/torey.png)