Research Committee Update

Recently I gave each of my five kids a copy of a book that I had been delighted to read, The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead by Charles Murray. I identified with the curmudgeon, hence the title of this column. Murray's book had its origins in postings the author made on the internal website of the American Enterprise Institute where he works, with tips for entry-level staff and interns such as: Excise the word “like” from your spoken English. Don't suck up, meaning don't excessively flatter supervisors. Make strong language count.

Choosing to Surge

This chapter traces a series of climactic meetings of the National Security Council in December of 2006. By December, Vice President Dick Cheney thought it was “pretty clear that we've got to do something different than what we've been doing. December was then devoted to sort of nailing down what that was going to be.” The president and his advisors discussed fundamental issues regarding American goals and responsibilities in Iraq and increasingly concluded that only a surge option, as part of a change in military strategy and an effort at bottom-up political reconciliation in Iraq, could salvage the American mission there. That same month, the president visited the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their meeting room to hear and address their concerns about whether an intensified military effort in Iraq might overtax the US military and even “break the force.” In December, too, public discussion about the American future in Iraq was fueled by reports from the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, which advocated for a regional diplomatic strategy to help quell violence in Iraq, as well as from the American Enterprise Institute, which advocated increasing US forces in Iraq and pursuing a proper counterinsurgency strategy. The impact of these external reviews on the eventual surge decision remains hotly debated; the chapter helps place these efforts within the context of the internal administration policy process and Bush's decision making.

Parental Trigger Laws and the Power of Framing in Educational Politics

This paper examines the discursive strategies employed by advocates of Parent Trigger laws in the United States which allow parents of children in “failing” schools, in some states, to call for interventions in the operation of the schools via petition. The paper reviews the genesis of Parent Trigger laws, the network of conservative political organizations supporting Parent Trigger legislation, and the ways in which Parent Trigger advocates have promoted the concept through the deployment of both material and symbolic resources. The paper argues that Parent Trigger laws promote a “thin” form of democratic participation that equates democracy with consumer choice through the strategic representation of public schools as broken institutions and parent trigger laws as empowering parents to choose. Support for this position is developed through an empirical qualitative analysis of a sample of media texts produced by various organizations within the Parent Trigger policy network including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), American Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, Parent Revolution, and others. By identifying frequently used framing devices such as metaphors, exemplars, catch-phrases, and depictions as well as reasoning devices such as root causes, consequences, and appeals to principle, the study reveals the dominant frames employed by Parent Trigger advocates and contributes to the development of a more critical perspective concerning the media produced by various interest groups.