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The most persuasive spokespeople for vouchers have emerged from the usually liberal confines of the black community -- Washington Post columnist William Raspberry; political advisor William Galston; Howard Fuller, the former superintendent of public schools in Milwaukee; and the Rev. Floyd Flake of Queens, a former congressman and college dean. Even one of the most die-hard foes of vouchers, Sandra Feldman, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has called Flake "someone whose motives are not questionable."

Now, however, Flake finds himself eclipsed by a mayor whose motives are dubious on several counts. To begin with, there is Giuliani's inconsistency. In a 1995 speech, as the New York Times recently reported, the mayor declared that vouchers would "weaken if not create the collapse of the New York City public school system." Giuliani now says his thinking on the issue has "evolved." That evolution has neatly coincided with the growth of his political ambitions. Though he is a liberal Republican on such issues as immigration, gay rights and legal abortion, Giuliani has, in the vouchers issue, an opportunity to reconcile himself with the GOP's right wing.

Then there are the mayor's tattered relations with the minority community, particularly over the conduct of the police. Flake, one of Giuliani's most significant black supporters, broke ranks with him to be arrested for protesting the police shooting of an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo. Last week, the trial began for four officers charged with having tortured a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, to the point of raping him with a broken length of broomstick. It is improbable, to put it mildly, that blacks would forgive Giuliani the Diallo and Louima atrocities in exchange for his support of vouchers.

And, finally, there is that image of dynamiting the school system. A day after Giuliani uttered the phrase, the New York press offered him an opportunity to disavow it. Instead, the mayor claimed he had first heard the expression years ago from Robert Wagner, then president of the Board of Education. Now dead, Wagner is in no position to dispute what struck former Mayor Edward Koch, among others, as Giuliani's flawed memory.

In any event, the mayor stood by his words. And now he must stand by what they conjure -- the belief that public education is literally hopeless. In that climate, vouchers won't stimulate reform; they'll stimulate increased flight from the public schools and increased calls by affluent, sectarian constituencies for vouchers of their own. The cycle will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Senate race ahead may ultimately feature a debate on vouchers, but the balance of power has already shifted. Hillary Clinton could easily be assailed as a symbol of the class inequality that vouchers seek to correct: She sent her daughter Chelsea to posh Sidwell Friends at the same time her husband was rejecting legislation to give vouchers to Washington's most destitute and maleducated children. Instead, with his reckless rhetoric, Rudy Giuliani has hung the bull's-eye on his own back.
salon.com | May 12, 1999

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