Although it attracted insufficient notice in the mainstream media, a dispiriting thing occurred after Bill Clinton left the presidency: Democrats, with some notable exceptions, essentially turned their backs on the idea of employing tough love to improve the nation’s public schools. This was predictable, I suppose, given the power that the teachers’ unions wield in the Democratic Party. Clinton attempted to challenge that orthodoxy, both as a candidate and as a president, with too little to show for it.

With help from Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton, school reform was an issue that Governor Clinton was tackling in Little Rock at the same time George H.W. Bush was proclaiming himself the “education president.” In 1989, Bush convened an “Education Summit” for the National Governor’s Association. Among those in attendance—and impressed by what he heard—was Bill Clinton. While running against the elder Bush in 1992, Clinton had significant policy differences with the incumbent Republican president, but education was not really one of them. Candidate Clinton asserted flatly that failing public schools were an issue the federal government needed to address, and not merely by pumping more federal money into the system.

In Putting People First, his 1992 campaign manifesto, Clinton insisted that the government ought to “demand accountability and quality of every school, teacher, and student.” As president, he and Richard Riley, the Clinton administration’s reform-minded Secretary of Education, introduced legislation called “Goals 2000,” designed to improve instruction in this nation's classrooms and to support standardized testing to prove that any ensuing educational gains were not illusionary. This approach engendered numerous responses, few of them positive. The first was that Democrats in Congress, saying the administration’s plan was “warmed-over Bush,” sent it back to the White House for modifications. Their primary objection seemed to be that Clinton’s approach focused too much on “outputs” (i.e. results) and not enough on “inputs” (i.e. more money for teachers and local schools). This was a depressing, if predictable, reaction. But Riley and Clinton pressed forward anyway.

Next, they ran into the reflexive Republican line that the feds were trying to take authority for designing the curricula away from state and local officials. In the face of bipartisan foot-dragging Clinton persevered, stumping across this nation in support of higher standards, more rigorous teaching methods, and some genuine accountability. I accompanied the president on some of those trips, and his heart was clearly in it. Clinton was still fighting the good fight on education when his presidency ended on the low notes of scandal and impeachment, and the immutable reality of presidential term limits.

In the run-up to the 2000 campaign, insurgent reformers within the education firmament took their blueprints for change to Camp Albert Gore. Perhaps worried about the Democratic primary challenge being mounted by Bill Bradley, the Gore forces dithered. Then an interesting event took place: Notwithstanding the fact that most of these reformers were Democrats, their ideas were embraced by the governor of Texas, a reform-minded Republican with a familiar name. George W. Bush went ahead to win the presidency in a disputed election, push successfully for enactment of a sweeping reform bill called No Child Left Behind (with backing from Senator Ted Kennedy and other influential congressional liberals), and then watched as his own reputation and efforts at consensus ran aground on the twin shoals of Iraq and economic meltdown.

There’s a short history of a complicated issue. Why is Loose Cannon weighing in on this subject now? Because today President-elect Barack Obama chose one of the reformers as his Secretary of Education. This is an appointment with the potential to break the gridlock on education reform, remove it from the realm of partisanship, and redeem the hopes of those whose real concern is what everyone's ought to be: On the school-kids of America. The new guy’s name is Arne Duncan, and his selection is an impressive sign for several reasons. For starters, it shows that Obama is not going to be cowed by the sordid scandal enveloping Illinois politics, one in which the current governor was caught on an FBI wiretap seemingly trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Arne Duncan is a Chicago Democrat himself: He’s superintendent of that city’s public school system. He is also a Barack friend and basketball buddy—heck, let’s call it what it is—he is an Obama crony. That is not always a bad thing. Duncan will have the new president's confidence and his back. Duncan has also managed to steer a middle ground between Chicago’s education reformers, who stress charter schools and support for No Child Left Behind, as well as its teachers’ unions, which want to protect their members from being judged capriciously, and for factors beyond their control.

The tension between the reformers and the unions is not, to use the phrased popularized by writer E.J. Dionne, a “false choice.” Real differences exist. But neither are the goals of the two sides necessarily mutually exclusive. What is needed is someone who can bridge the gap. Obama had a wide range of prominent candidates for Education Secretary, some of whom are actually hostile to real reform. Among the reformers, Duncan was one of many impressive educators, including Michael Bennet, Joel Klein, and Michelle Rhee (the superintendents in Denver, New York, and Washington, D.C, respectively). Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado, would have been a strong choice. Personally, as a former education beat reporter, I was pulling for Newark Mayor Cory Booker. But in Arne Duncan, Obama has picked a true reformer, a skilled diplomat, and a man he trusts implicitly. It’s a good sign.