Teachers’ Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention

In yet another possible sign that Barack Obama's lack of change "change" administration is really pissing off those who put him in office, now the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have given Obama's representatives the cold shoulder at the annual convention. Like gays and Hispanics, teachers have heard a lot of speeches yet seen little or no action - even as state budget cuts are threatening to force teachers - rather than higher paid and often worthless central office administrators - out of jobs. Does anyone in the White House "get it" yet? It would seem not. And again, none of this bodes well for the November mid-terms where numerous portions of the Democrat base are faced with the realization that giving control of Congress and the White House to the Democrats has brought either nothing at all or watered down half measures compared to all the now broken campaign promises. The only possible saving factor for the Democrats is that the GOP seems Hell bent to become even more extreme and crazy. Here are highlights from the New York Times:
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[I]n a sign of the Obama administration’s strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling.
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The largest union’s meeting opened here on Saturday to a drumbeat of heated rhetoric, with several speakers calling for Mr. Duncan’s resignation, hooting delegates voting for a resolution criticizing federal programs for “undermining public education,” and the union’s president summing up 18 months of Obama education policies by saying, “This is not the change I hoped for.”
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“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the union, the National Education Association, told thousands of members gathered at the convention center here.
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Better relations are important to the administration. Mr. Van Roekel’s association, with more than three million members, says it spent $50 million in 2008 to help elect the president and more than 50 candidates for Congress and governors’ offices, most of them Democrats. The American Federation of Teachers, with 1.4 million members, also spent millions of dollars to help elect Mr. Obama and other candidates in 2008.
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“If the teachers sit on their hands this fall, it would be a disaster for Obama and the Democrats,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has studied the teachers’ unions.
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[M]any state and local teachers’ union leaders have expressed ambivalent views on the Obama administration. “We have to recognize that with Obama we have a voice in the decision-making, they listen to us,” said Earl Wiman, president of the Tennessee Education Association. But he added, “Mostly what we’ve seen out of this administration is a top-down, put-your-thumb-on-somebody kind of philosophy, and it’s aroused more frustration around federal education policy than I’ve ever seen.”
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For me, it has become increasingly clear that while Obama may have been effective legislator, a leader he is not. He prefers following rather than leading and that, unfortunately, is NOT what so many Americans voted for in 2008.