Be Vewy Vewy Upset, I'm Hunting Unions

Yes, Megan likes vouchers, & is "very, very upset." Tell us how you really feel, Megatron. Because "very, very upset" sounds like a mother who wants to murder her offspring, but is barely holding her rage in. Seriously,  for once she commits to something here. Increasing right-wing looniness, yeah, but it's not like wading in the usual mushy opinions. W/ this exception: 

I think the most hard-core voucher advocate would have to admit that its modest gains are not what we had hoped.

where she forfeits the game before it even gets underway. And she's kind enough to give President O. the benefit of the doubt, in the first clause of the very same sentence:

the possibility that Barack Obama genuinely believes that the DC voucher program is not helping the students.

The good vibes don't last forever, though. 

Education gets Mlle. riled up. She's so ideological on this that I can engage w/o knowing squat about what's really wrong w/ education. (Like economics, a nebulous field, in which many differences seem based on ideology rather than the real problems.) I need only look for the dog-whistles.

I think that there is probably a special place in hell reserved for politicians who betray our nation's most helpless children for the benefit of a sullen and recalcitrant teacher's union.

See? Those teachers & their unions are just stubborn children, all sullen &c.

Of course, if glibertarians are mostly interested in union busting (just on an ideological basis, of course) so potential voucher school operators will have a larger pool of incompetents to under-pay, there's little to engage.

And if things haven't turned out as even the hard-care voucherites (Voucherians?) had hoped, well, climb on the class/culture war wagon & see if resentment can be stirred up against those snooty spicy mustard eaters from "good" schools.

Bingo! The political is rendered personal, & the "Obama Girls" attending a private school is, while not accompanied by shouts of "Hypocrites!!" a good excuse to bring up some of those words:

[T]he Obama girls would do just as well in ordinary, democratic, thoroughly American public schools as in an elitist Quaker institution.

The best of the words is "elitist." (Where & why would Our Muse have ended up w/o her parents sending her to private, "elitist" schools? Should she have been deprived of that?) 

Though the phrase "thoroughly American" just leaped out at me. I have to give Ms. McArdle credit here. She's coined an elegant, sophisticated way to express the ever-popular Sarah Michele Palin-Bachmann "Real America" concept. Quite the dog-whistle. We didn't just hear some, we found a brand-new one. Congrats, Megan McArdle!! 

What is it about the Obama girls that enables them, nearly uniquely, to benefit from school choice?

Well, I think it might be that their parents have a pretty good pile of money. Is McA. now suggesting that the Prez be punished for being successful? (Is there anyone in the United Snakes who earned several million last yr. who isn't sending their spawn to private schools?) 

We might say something about security considerations (If I were president I probably wouldn't let my children out of the White House.) but who knows w/o actual research? Just sayin', if you know what I'm sayin'.

And it's worth noting that no Republican Prexy since Teddy Roosevelt (no research, just our looooong but fading memory) has had high school-age or younger children while in the office. Maybe no prez at all between Teddy R. & Kennedy had young sprats. How many R-Anywhere offspring in Wash. go to public school? Blah blah.

P. S.: What the hell, & for what it's worth, the solution to the schools/education problem is more involved parents & less ideologues involved. Blah blah blah.

Elements of Style©:

how come the Obama girls benefit from leaving the DC public school system?

"How come," in speech, makes you sound like a mouth-breather who's sucked in too many fumes pumping gas. In typing, it reads the same, & "why" is three keystrokes as opposed to eight.

More Elements: As typed, that sentence asks why leaving the D. C. schools is benefits the girls. (The schools stink because Congress doesn't want to spend money on educating D. C. residents is my answer.) I think she really means "Why do they get to leave (& thereby benefit, allegedly)?" Whatever. Some people just won't learn. Or can't learn, & should go to a vocational school.