Happy Talk from an Inane President

By Gil Villagrán, MSW El Observador, San Jose, April 21, 2006


It may be impolite, but I expect that many of the several hundred people attending the American Competitiveness Initiative panel hosted by Cisco Systems on April 21, 2006 with President Bush and Governor Schwarzenegger, may have thought, as I thought: This is the leader of the free world? This is the governor of California?

Bush initiated the discussion stating: “I aim to be a competitive nation (sic).” The inane happy talk spun out by these two included Bushisms, as “the benefits of innovation by innovative companies run by innovative people will keep America competitive…” Bush reiterated his point, “innovation reminds me of how important innovation is.” He then explained to the seemingly enthralled audience, “we’ve got to learn math and science, history may not cut it.”

Yet Bush, who claims a BA degree in history, might have recalled the lessons of history, particularly the history of U.S. interventions in other nations, that such interventions always end badly for the nations invaded. While for our own nation, whatever it is we have “won,” it has been at a great cost in blood and treasure, as well as a growing reputation that we are an aggressive empire in the eyes of the world. But there was not a word about Iraq, as if Silicon Valley was protected by a high tech innovative force field that blocked that bitter reality.

Bush then turned to his perennial comfort zone of No Child Left Behind, explaining that we must “hold people to account, …what works, what did not work, …an accountability system…(and that) mediocrity is unacceptable.”

On hearing these words, I noticed smirks by journalists in the row in front of me as he quipped, “Mediocrity is unacceptable,” I could not agree more!

Bush then offered this wisdom, “Here is some ideas (sic) to meet learning standards: to put together a national math panel… for 70,000 teachers for advanced placement in math, and 30,000 adjunct professors.”

To which Schwarzenegger enthused, “What a brilliant idea!”

Alas, there was no commitment of federal or state funds for these additional 100,000 educators or classrooms for them.

The other panelists were John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, the president of Foothill College, the director of an East Palo Alto educational non-profit, the director of a high tech start-up, and a San Jose State University engineering student, each more eloquent in their few minutes of discussion than the President or Governor.

Outside the eerily empty boulevards between Cisco’s 40+ buildings, empty because the secret service closed all streets and the Light Rail for miles around, some 400 people protested the policies of the Bush administration. They were corralled by San Jose police into a “free speech zone” half a mile away, where no one could hear their chants nor read their signs except themselves. There was no way that the President could hear their disagreement with his pre-emptive war, torture, secret surveillance and the direction of our nation. I could see that it was President Bush who was in a protective “no free speech zone” where all he could hear was his own inane happy talk.