Lamar's choice.

WHICH SIDE is Lamar Alexander on anyway? In early April the Secretary of Education was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that education would not figure in the Bush-Clinton presidential contest, because "How can you have an issue if there is little difference?" Although Alexander has been insisting to conservative groups from Heritage to Library Court ever since that he was misquoted--of course he's for school choice--his behind-thescenes manuevers suggest that not only did the Post have the story straight, Alexander was telling the truth the first time: There is no difference.

A key example was President Bush's speech at Dieruff High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, just about a week after Alexander's gaffe. The speech, written by Dan McGroarty at the White House, was a good one, loaded with pro-school-choice language. Alexander got hold of a copy, however, and he and his staff came down hard on McGroarty; in fact, word is that this was not at all the genteel Lamar Alexander you see at GOP socials.

Not that he came out against choice, you understand. He just wanted it toned down. Particularly distressing to the secretary was the passage wherein the President was to say that parents had the right to send their kids to any school, "public, private, or religious." There was a great deal of back and forth, and campaign strategist Bob Teeter happened to be walking down the hall and overheard some of it. His intervention helped keep the language in, because Teeter at least understands that this is a wedge issue against Clinton. There was some apprehension at the White House that Alexander, who was riding on the plane with Bush to Allentown, would perform some last-minute surgery, but the speech came off, with the lines about "public, private, or religious" schools intact.

This backroom tussle was reported by Fred Barnes in The New Republic. But what hasn't yet been reported are Alexander's remarkable statements since then. He knows he has a problem with conservatives, and he knows that conservatives rightly are focused on school choice.

That, however, is not what he's saying to staff. Behind the closed doors of the White House, Alexander has been remarkably frank about what he told the Post earlier. In fact, he has repeated it. "There is no difference between Bush and Clinton," he says. "I'm not going to go around the country saying it, but the difference is nuance.'' In meetings he also derides the idea of letting parents pick their kids' schools as an inside-the-Beltway issue with no broad appeal.

All this is entirely in character. Last year NATIONAL REVIEW reported a meeting between Senate Republican leaders and Alexander, in which the secretary was urging the senators to abandon school choice. Cut a deal with Kennedy, he said, to get an education bill through--any education bill--and get a photo-op with Barbara Bush in front of a New American School. Now, apart from the school-choice provisions, the President's America 2000 program is pure pork. Nonetheless Alexander never wanted the choice provision in the first place. Allowing parents to choose was muscled in at the last minute by then Chief of Staff John Sununu.

The upshot of all this is that school choice is going nowhere, and Bush is losing a defining issue with Clinton. Take the Allentown speech, which is supposed to be Bush's major education statement. In fact, the speech itself ,was very pro-choice. But it wasn't reported that way. The reason? The policy wonks in Alexander's department came up with a proposal to provide a $25,000 lifetime line of credit for any American who wants to continue his education--which provision, of course, would immediately lead to the creation of all manner of quack degrees and certifications from fly-by-night outfits hoping to milk the latest federal cow. Needless to say the press all hopped on board, focusing on the latest pork and ignoring the language on school choice.

That's the way they like it at Alexander's shop. Although the secretary likes to parade his tough credentials on education (as governor of Tennessee, he had run afoul of teachers' unions by pushing for merit pay), he turns to jello when school choice comes up. And he seems much more interested in staying out of any frays as he grooms himself for a run at his boss's job in 1996 than he is in furthering his boss's agenda now. Indeed, at a time when the President is talking about cutting government, Alexander has greatly expanded the Office of Inter-Governmental and Inter-Agency Affairs. Privately this is known as the vanguard of the Alexander for President campaign.

Alexander's behavior is the more startling because Bush knows school choice is a gut issue and inserts it in speeches even when it's not in the script. So far, unfortunately, he has been content to talk about choice and let it stop there, and some staffers speculate he doesn't know the extent to which his Secretary of Education opposes him on the issue. Conservatives, for example, have been urging the Administration to introduce parental choice in the Impact Aid that goes to school districts located next to military bases; this is something the White House could do unilaterally, using an area where the Federal Government already has a role as a test.

Such talk scares the bejesus out of the Alexandrites. Thus, whatever Bush may say about letting parents choose, and however valuable this would be in defining himself against Clinton, it all gets thrown to the winds because his own Secretary of Education doesn't believe there are any differences between Democrats and Republicans. "The sad thing is," says one White House staffer, "that so long as Lamar believes that and sits where he sits, there won't be any differences."