McCain and Obama battle in Ohio over education

The parties also favor ‘special needs’ proposals.

Chicago Tribune

RIVERSIDE, Ohio — Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday charged rival Sen. John McCain with “three decades of indifference on education” as the Illinois Democrat sought to sharpen distinctions with the Republican ticket on a topic of special resonance to the white women voters who have shown renewed interest in McCain since Sarah Palin joined his ticket.

At a high school gymnasium in the battleground state of Ohio, Obama promised to expand federal aid to education while he blasted the record McCain has accumulated on education since the Republican was first elected to Congress in 1982.

“He has not done one thing to truly improve the quality of public education in our country. Not one real proposal or law or initiative. Nothing,” Obama declared.

The criticism of McCain’s congressional record also fits an Obama campaign strategy to challenge Republican efforts to present McCain and Palin as agents of change. At every opportunity, Obama and his allies are now arguing McCain has done little to change Washington in his 26 years there.

Obama bolstered the attack on McCain’s education record with a new television commercial claiming the Republican’s economic plan would give “$200 billion more to special interests while taking money away from public schools.”

The Obama campaign said the claim was justified by a McCain proposal to freeze discretionary nondefense spending for one year. Education funding would continue at current levels under that scenario.

By the end of the day, McCain’s campaign had released its own television commercial saying Obama “hasn’t made a significant mark on education” in his career and is a “staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly.”

McCain favors educational vouchers that parents could use for a public school or tuition at a private school. Obama opposes vouchers.

Obama offered new proposals Tuesday to double federal funding for charter schools and establish a federal fund to encourage better use of computers and technology in the classroom at a total cost of $1 billion annually.

Combined with education proposals he announced last year, Obama plans to expand federal aid to education by $19 billion per year. The bulk of Obama’s proposed funding increases target making preschool education more affordable, providing better pay for high-performing teachers and improving math and science teaching.

In a brief exchange with reporters after his education speech, Obama downplayed recent polls that show a surge of support for McCain since the Republican National Convention and his choice of Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate.

“These are the same polls that had me 20 [percentage points] down last summer, that have swung wildly throughout this process,” Obama said.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., raised the emotional issue of stem cell research on the stump, arguing opposition to the practice from many anti-abortion Republicans shows a lack of concern for children with disabilities.

Though Biden did not mention Palin by name, the GOP vice presidential nominee opposes stem cell research while McCain supports it. Palin’s infant son, Trig, has Down syndrome, and in her debut speech at the Republican National Convention last week, Palin pledged to be a “friend and advocate” for families of children with “special needs.”

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect,” Biden said at a rally in Columbia, Mo. “Well, guess what, folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said Biden had “sunk to a new low.”