Astroturfing Academia

Apparently, the president is having such a hard time of it politically that he is even losing faith in part of his base—academia. In a recent campus appearance, his handlers evidently felt the need to salt the crowd with a few ringers. The event took place just a few blocks up the street from the White House, in the heart of Obama country.

“George Washington University students were dismayed Tuesday that they never got to see the man they helped elect president in 2008,” Ben Giles reported in The Washington Examiner on October 13, 2010. “President Obama, whose election was fueled by young voters, held a town hall meeting at the school just across town from the White House, but only about 20 of the 120 people allowed to participate were from the university and only a handful of those were students.”

“Most of those who got to see the president were brought in by Obama’s political organization, Organizing for America.” (We note, proudly, that Ben Giles is a graduate of the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Academia and its big sister organization, Accuracy in Media)

“But all of the questions at George Washington University were softballs—a recurring dynamic largely engineered by the White House and the Democratic Party to protect Obama, but which also dramatically limits the political value of his so-called town hall events,” Julie Mason reported in another story which appeared in The Examiner on October 13, 2010. “The GW event was not unlike the gatherings Obama has been holding in the backyards of supporters across the country: small, tightly controlled events featuring questions posed only by local Democrats.”

If even the college lecture circuit looks iffy for both the POTUS and the TOTUS, it’s not for want of trying on the part of the administration. “President Obama campaigned on a promise to provide billions more dollars to students and colleges, and he has delivered,” Kelly Field reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Since he took office, almost two years ago, spending on student aid has grown by nearly 50 percent, to $145-billion, while aid to colleges has exploded.”

“Much of the new money has come with no strings attached, including $36-billion for Pell Grants in a student-loan bill he signed in March.” It should be noted that this largesse does not come without strings. Call it No College Left Behind.

“More than any of his predecessors, he has demanded results in exchange for federal dollars, requiring grant applicants to set benchmarks for improvement and threatening to withhold aid from programs that fail to prepare students for jobs,” Field explains. This amounts to a form of the “double secret probation” Riff Randall faced in “Rock and Roll High School” as administrators devise lowest common denominator tests designed to shake the federal money tree.

What is less certain is whether this approach will improve either literacy or reelection prospects for U. S. senators or congressional representatives.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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