When Talking Points Fail

At The New York Times’ campaign blog Berkeley professor Bruce Fuller says that Senator McCain and President Bush are joined at the hip on education policy.   That’s certainly true — and worrisome — on a lot of issues, but unfortunately not on ours.  In fact, the Republican Platform (pdf) is more or less straight out of the 1990s Republican playbook (and doesn’t even mention No Child Left Behind) and McCain has not talked about the achievement gap or accountability with nearly the same specificity that Bush did.  For all the bellyaching you hear today, an Education Department focused on using federal authority in education may look pretty good in hindsight a few years into a McCain Administration…