Seeking the Mantle of “Opportunity”: Presidential Politics and the Educational Metaphor, 1964-2000

Traditionally, scholars have accorded the issue of education only a minor role in understanding presidential elections. The authors suggest that this is a mis-take and offer a reassessment of education’s symbolic and substantive role in contemporary presidential politics. In particular, education’s embodiment of opportunity and personal responsibility made it a crucial metaphor in post–Great Society politics. The new conservatism that emerged in 1964 would enjoy success with its sunny promise of individual opportunity but would even-tually be torn between its implicit guarantee of universal opportunity and oppo-sition to activist government. In the early 1990s, centrist Democrats used edu-cation to exploit this tension and slip the party’s “tax and spend ” reputation. Republican nominees, in turn, struggled to demonstrate their commitment to extending opportunity to all Americans. In 2000, Republican candidate George W. Bush used an accountability-driven education program to neutralize the Democratic advantage but, in so doing, created a potential party rift with implications for future presidential politics and national education policy. TRADITIONALLY, SCHOLARS have accorded the issue of education only a minor role in understanding presidential elections. This accounting fails to appreciate the pivotal symbolic role that education has played in national pol-itics as both major parties have sought to accommodate broad social and political changes. Here, we reassess education’s symbolic and substantive role in contemporary presidential politics. Such an examination helps illumi-nate the contours of national educational policy, especially in the case of issues such as school choice and accountability. Education has been far mor