Media

Bush was right?!?!

by Armstrong Williams - 02/04/10 7:21 PM ET

Yet in the midst of all the reverberations, not even the paper that broke the
story acknowledged the contributions by (and subsequent vindication of) the
nation’s leading proponent of abstinence funding — former President George W.
Bush.

It’s not as if The Washington Post
wasn’t aware of Bush’s policies on abstinence. In April 2007, the paper ran a
story questioning the effectiveness of the practice, beginning the piece with
this critical refrain:

“A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex
education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social agenda, does not
keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the
likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.”

Can a brother get some credit when it’s rightfully due him? If such a policy
was the “cornerstone” of a president’s entire social agenda, and it was later
discovered to contain some kernels of benefit and true policy impact, then why
wouldn’t the Post want to
acknowledge that? Is the former president no longer relevant? I don’t think so.

Apparently, the Obama administration doesn’t think so, either, as they
incessantly lay the blame for all their policy woes on Bush’s doorstep.

In a blog post earlier this week by Focus on the Family, the organization
highlighted four key discoveries on why this report should change the way
abstinence programs are viewed and utilized. Students receiving
abstinence-centered education:

– initiated sex less;
– had fewer sexual partners;
– did not reduce their use of condoms among the sexually active;
– had more pronounced risk reductions than those receiving safe-sex and
comprehensive sex education.

Some longtime critics of abstinence programs did the right thing and embraced
the study’s findings, even if it meant eating a little crow. In that same 2007 Post
story, a spokeswoman for the Sexuality
Information and Education Council of the United States dismissed Bush’s policy
as too narrow. “Abstinence-only was an experiment and it failed,” said council
spokeswoman Martha Kempner at the time. Then on Feb. 2, the Post quoted Monica Rodriguez of the council calling the
study’s findings “exciting” and saying, “[W]e have a new tool to add to our
repertoire.” Good for her, and for all those science-based academics interested
in facts first, while leaving the hand-wringing rhetoric to the liberals who
thought Jocelyn Elders belonged on Sesame Street.

Was any of this covered with the level of depth and attention it deserved,
given its radioactive nature and the policy lines abstinence-only programs
draw? Is the media’s hatred of Bush so visceral that should they acknowledge
his role in this they may eventually be forced to acquiesce that (null!) he had
something to do with preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil?!

I guess I’m not surprised by the short shrift President Bush received when this
new study was released, but we all should be as a country. For when the media
starts believing it has the omniscience to pick and choose what gets written in
the annals of history, history suffers.