Sec. Alexander Addresses IOP

Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander discussed the major changes he believes will take place in American politics in the next quarter-century in a featured speech at this weekend's 25th anniversary celebration of the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics (IOP).

Alexander focused on the future roles of the president, Congress and local governments before an audience of more than 200 people at the Kennedy School's ARCO Forum. Alexander forecasted that the president and local governments will become increasingly important, while the power of Congress will decline.

He said that because the president will increasingly be looked to as a symbol, candidates will need to be beyond reproach in their personal and public lives.

"The only people who will run for the presidency will have devoted their entire lives to political priesthood," said Alexander.

As the role of the president expands, so too will that of local governments, Alexander said. Governors and mayors will increasingly enact the domestic plan the president will set, and they will assume many of Congress's tasks.

"Governors and mayors will be the best jobs in the next 20 years," he said.

As the power of local governments increases, that of Congress will diminish in the coming decades, Alexander said.

"I think what the Congress should do is to go home in June and July, because it is becoming increasingly irrelevant," he said. "It is making up things to do."

"We'll see a new breed of members of Congress because foreign policy will be left to the president and domestic issues to the governors," he said.

The change will be for the best, said the secretary. "Congress will be an increasingly respected forum doing fewer things."

Future of Education

In the second half of his speech, Alexander turned to what concerns him on a daily basis--the future of American education. The secretary said Bush's America 2000 proposal to reform American education will move cities and towns to improve their school systems.

"We'll see the education movement like the civil rights movement," Alexander said. "I think that sometime during that time there will be a new American homecoming. We'll ask what will we have to do to contribute to each other and the world."

The aims of the America 2000 plan include increasing the number of scientists and mathematicians, ridding the schools of drugs and violence and attaining a 90 percent high school graduation rate, all by the year 2000.

The secretary called for politicians to abandon their partisanship and work together to pass effective legislation. "We ought to move education around the political arena," he said.

Alexander defended systems of education where parents have the right to choose which schools they want their children to attend, saying that such programs will not promote segregation. Bush's education proposal allows people to determine where to enroll their children.

"If [choice systems] should create classes of schools, the school board would try to change things," Alexander said.

While conceding that the American educational system has its share of problems, Alexander said, "We probably have the best system of higher education in the world."

In his speech, Alexander touched briefly on a variety of other topics. At one point, he argued that the media has too great an influence on the political process.

"Have you noticed how often it's the media interviewing each other?" he said. "Who really cares what all those un-elected people think. I don't think the voters do.