Freedom Line Blog

Of the 18 bills proposed by Britain’s Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats none may be as immediately consequential as the Academies Bill.  Filed in May just days after the Coalition took power, the Academies Bill allows any public school rated as “outstanding” by the central government to be approved automatically for privatization.  The stated goal is to move authority for running the school from local bureaucrats to private individuals; be they groups of parents, charities, or religious institutions.

The schools are allowed to use whatever methods necessary to meet the national testing requirements, but they can only charge the amount of the voucher each student gets from the central government.  If the school can deliver the desired results for less than the voucher, they get to keep the money left over.  Oh, by the way; this nationwide program starts this September.

The Coalition’s motivation for this and other decentralizing initiatives results from two realities: cutting spending to reduce the deficit, and giving more power to everyday citizens.

As conservative presidential contenders start to ramp-up their 2012 campaigns, I hope they are paying close attention to these striking policy developments.  The economic crisis coupled with the incompetency of our own overgrown governments may be just the combination necessary to mark a new birth of freedom in America.

With most of the 2012 presidential speculation focusing on the Republican side, it’s interesting to read Peggy Noonan publicly musing about the possibility of Democratic insiders pressuring the Secretary of State to challenge President Obama for the party’s nomination.

And yet, it makes sense.  Reality or not, Hillary Clinton creates the impression that she would be obsessively involved with a crisis like the Gulf Oil Spill.  Unlike Obama, it’s hard to imagine her projecting anything other than complete control of the situation.  She is, after all, the grade school student who wrote a sixty-page term paper, and who infamously crafted her version of “comprehensive health care” reform without troubling members of Congress for their input.

For all his pretensions at remaking America in his own Progressive image, President Obama shows startling apathy for the nitty gritty of governance.  Americans need nitty gritty right now.  We need someone to show us that despite all its inefficiencies, government can still be made to work when it is absolutely necessary.

For Democrats, the person most able to do it may be just off stage left.

Hats off to the media for casting their glance to a deserving corner of Middle America. While we’re still about 10 months from the 2012 presidential sweepstakes starting in earnest, an amazing amount of journalistic attention has been directed towards Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in recent days — this despite the fact that Daniels has probably been the most reticent of all potential GOP contenders.

Anyone who can generate plaudits from National Review’s Mona Charen, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, and the New York Times’ Ross Douthat in the course of a week deserves a serious look. It also helps if that same individual can make principled, fact-driven cases for market-based policies, come off as more decent than any other politician on the continent, and give the best political speech of the last decade.

Before Republicans begin their usual coronation of the next candidate in line, Mitch Daniels deserves consideration commensurate with his tremendous record as a public servant.