No Choice

I'm saddened that Barack Obama and the Democrats have killed the DC voucher program. Who'd have thought they'd finally find an education program where we should spend less, not more.

Anyway, it's hard to get too excited, since there are so many bigger fish to fry. So I'm saddened, not surprised. After all, if there's one interest group the Dems support, it's the teachers (or more specifically, their unions). But Megan McCardle is more than saddened:

Here's what I don't understand though: how come the Obama girls benefit from leaving the DC public school system? Surely, if it doesn't make any difference, the Obama girls would do just as well in ordinary, democratic, thoroughly American public schools as in an elitist Quaker institution. Wouldn't it bring wonderful diversity to both the school, and the Obama daughters, to have the children of the president rubbing shoulders with the children of the district's more ordinary residents? What is it about the Obama girls that enables them, nearly uniquely, to benefit from school choice?

If you know me on this issue, you know that I am very, very upset. And that I think that there is probably a special place in hell reserved for politicians who betray our nation's most helpless children for the benefit of a sullen and recalcitrant teacher's union. There they spend all eternity explaining to their victims why they couldn't possibly have risked their precious babies' future in the public school system, yet felt perfectly free to fling other peoples' children into it by the thousands.