Clinton and Preschool

Hillary Clinton announces support for an ambitious pre-school initiative. Politically, I think this is a great issue for her to take a leading role on since, though it might be a problem in the general election, anything that enhances her "woman" branding can't but help with a primary where Edwards and Obama can gain the support of all the young men and bloggers they like and still lose. It's also a good plan on the merits.

I do, however, think that the release of a quite specific plan in a context that involves neither health care nor John Edwards marks a good opportunity to revisit the debate over policy proposals. It strikes me as very plausible that Hillary Clinton will win the nomination. It also strikes me as very plausible that having won the nomination, Clinton will win the general election and become President of the United States. It does not, however, strike me as remotely plausible that this sequence of events will lead in 2009 to the establishment of a $10 billion per year universal pre-K program. And that's even though such a program probably wouldn't engender a huge amount of interest-group opposition. The objective budgetary circumstances simply aren't amenable to passing that kind of new spending commitment. I think it's great for her to propose a big financial commitment, because that increases the chances of getting a modest financial commitment. That, however, works well because this particular proposal is scalable; you could do a cheaper, more narrowly targeted program if that's all you had the votes for.

Comments

It's a bad idea on the merits, and it is going to kill her in the general. Nothing will unify and motivate the otherwise dispirited Republican base with Independent women more. Say hello to President Romney.

Posted by Pithlord | May 22, 2007 10:38 AM

The Republican nominee need only say four words: "Hillary nationalizes your kids."

Posted by Pithlord | May 22, 2007 10:41 AM

Matt, you really underestimate the anti-hillary sentiment among the party. to people who hate Hillary, you might as well be nominating Joe Lieberman. We won't vote for Hillary no matter how bad the Republican nominee is.

If women decide on their own to nominate the most conservative nominee because she's female, they can deal with the repercussions of creating a party that places gender ahead of ideology. If they want to be disgusting, sexist, tribal beings; fine. They aren't my tribe or gender, so I won't vote for them. You give what you get and you get what you give.

Posted by soullite | May 22, 2007 10:51 AM

Yes, Matt, politicians do indeed say they will support or enact legislation that they won't or can't enact after they win office. Welcome to politics! This is classic Clinton (Bill variety) politics where you support some vague, not particularly expensive program that sounds like it would be valuable and doesn't garner much opposition in a campaign then you forget about it after winning and pay no penalty because nobody really cared about it.

Posted by Ron | May 22, 2007 11:13 AM

Pithlord: I haven't seen polling, but childcare is a big financial burden for lots of families, and you'd need to have some real data to convince me that this is bad politically.

Soullite: As someone who thinks Ezra Klein is a corporate elitist and there is no rational reason for female voters to support a female candidate, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you have no idea what most of the party thinks.

Ron: This sounds like the exact opposite of that, given that it is not vague and is fairly expensive.

Matt: Doesn't whether or not this could actually happen depend completely on what happens in the next couple of years? Will we pull out of Iraq, will Democrats win more seats, will the GOP moderates defect, etc.?

Posted by Sam L. | May 22, 2007 11:22 AM

Soullite, that entire comment is utterly ludicrous. By any reasonable standard, Hillary is nowhere near as objectionable as Lieberman on foreign policy and has solid liberal credentials on most other issues. She's not my first choice, or even my second choice, but many people support her for reasons that have nothing to do with her gender. The only people I know who "hate" Hillary and rant about her are the sort of people who forward each other chain e-mails about how global warming is a hoax. Fine company you're keeping.

Taking your toys and going home if you don't like the primary results is exactly the sort of attitude that gave us President George W. Bush in the first place. Do you honestly think that President John McCain will be no worse for liberal causes than Clinton? Gimme a break!

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 22, 2007 11:22 AM

If you are committed to progressive principles, you will find a great deal to like about a policy like this. If, however, you are a progressive in name only who despises anything Clinton, well, you're a progressive in name only...

Posted by JoeCHI | May 22, 2007 11:38 AM

I will have to be extremely skeptical of any universal pre-school plan until I see all the details. I did a policy analysis of California's Universal Pre-School act when it was proposed in 2004 and found that, for all its expense, it would have helped very, very little. The Feds already have a very, very good pre-school system: Head Start.

Childcare is the number one expense for most families. Preschool is just as if not more expensive, some with tuitions rivaling private high schools. A lot of preschools, however, are little more than glorified day care. Universal access will also require damned good standards.

Posted by James F. Elliott | May 22, 2007 12:36 PM

No kidding. $10B is a huge amount of money. It's roughly 1/6ths of the DoEd's budget, and probably about half the DoEd's budget not relating to higher education.

The big money outside of entitlements is in what John McCain wants to do: alter defense procurement priorities. But that engenders lots of interest group opposition and the accusation that you want to ruin lots of factory towns in the northeast and southwest.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | May 22, 2007 1:27 PM

I am still waiting for any evidence that Hillary Clinton will actually win, i.e., that primary voters will actually vote for a proud supporter of the Iraq War who plans to continue it indefinitely to support permanent military bases.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 22, 2007 2:39 PM

What in the hell do we need pre-school for? OK, I'll buy stats that it helps certain disadvantaged kids if you can produce them, but otherwise can't kids have a few years just to be kids before we herd them into our frantic go-go lifestyle where every momnent must be planned and organized? It's bad enough we do that to older children who once used to be allowed a few hours unstructured play tiem on their own, do we have to steal that freedom even from three year old to make our own lives more convenient?

Posted by Jonf | May 22, 2007 9:50 PM