Opinion

Back-to-School Hypocrisy

President Obama yesterday delivered his much-anticipated back-to-school speech to the nation’s schoolkids and — surprise, surprise — there was nothing political or contentious about it.

The president, appearing at a Virginia high school, urged students to work hard, complete their assignments and “be careful what you post on Facebook.”

Pretty tame stuff.

Which is why Democrats are asking why conservatives raised such a stink about the speech in the first place.

Too bad they didn’t take the same attitude back in 1991 — when the first President George Bush made a similar address at a Washington, DC, high school.

Then, the Democrats went ballistic.

As Byron York of the Washington Examiner notes, they attacked Bush’s speech as campaign propaganda. “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president,” said Dick Gephardt, then the House majority leader.

And they didn’t stop there — Democrats actually hauled top administration officials, including Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, before the House Education and Labor Committee to explain the use of “scarce education funds to produce a media event.”

They even ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate — which it did, concluding that there was nothing improper about either Bush’s speech or the use of $26,750 in DOE funds.

And note that, back then, the issue that had Democrats screaming bloody murder was the mere fact of Bush’s speech itself — not, as in Obama’s case, the White House’s creepy lesson plan, which at one point encouraged students to develop strategies to “help the president.”

Hypocritical?

But of course. They’re Democrats.