School's Out for Summer, Still

From Baseball Crank:

When I mentioned this speech to my wife, her immediate reaction was that Obama wasn’t looking at the calendar: the New York City schools, public and private, aren’t even in session yet the day after Labor Day. Obama’s effort to roll this into a massive PR blitz with the following day’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress will fail in my neck of the woods because nobody paid attention to the school calendar.

This is looking more and more like an ill-considered rush job. From my comments:

There’s a process for getting things into the school curriculum. So far as I can tell, the speech and the DOE supplied curriculum supplemental did not go through the normal process. That’s bad, bad, bad no matter what your politics. No doubt had it gone through the normal process somebody would have addressed the neutrality/balance issues before it got published on the Internet.

And then, of course, there’s the inevitable White House Back Step. Due, if I had to guess, to lots and lots of concerned parents and a few grouchy blogposts. Yea, us.

So why the rush? To coincide with the new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative? Well, it’s not like they sprung this on the White House without much warning. Part of a media blitz? Two things argue against that: We’ve had a non-stop White House media blitz since Bill Clinton invented the Permanent Campaign; and it still doesn’t explain the rush.

The only two solid reasons I can think of are:

1. This Administration still hasn’t found its footing.

2. The White House is in Panic Mode.

Not sure which it is — maybe both? Not sure which is worse, either.