Related story: Education bill Brings Bush, Kennedy together -- Unlikely mutual admirers

By Scott MacKay
Journal Staff Writer

Sometimes, politics is just theater and reporters are reduced to critics.

This is pretty much what the Kennedy-Bush education event in Boston was all about.

The education bill had already been approved by Congress, so there was little substance in President Bush's cross-country ``bill-signing'' events, staged in the hometowns of various reps and senators.

This was pure politics -- the conservative Republican president and the nation's leading liberal Democrat holding a lovefest in Boston to tout Bush's education bill.

It was the political equivalent of two married people who had a one-night stand; they both got what they needed before heading back to their spouses.

Some tips:

I did the same thing I always do when I get a national political assignment, which was to run to news librarian Linda Henderson's office to see if she could dig up the latest related clips from the big national papers. In this case, on education.

Then I called Providence Journal Washington bureau chief John E. Mulligan, who had done some very good stories when this bill was making its way through Congress.

I also consulted Linda Borg and Marion Davis, The Journal's education writers, who directed me to clips.

Linda also had some succint advice: Look at this basically as a ``testing bill.'' By the time it got through Congress, the tax cuts and the ugly events of Sept. 11 had occurred and there was not a whole lot of federal money for new programs. And the bill didn't really address such nettlesome problems as how to pay for special education and an array of other programs that help the disadvantaged.

One of the fun things about covering a national political event is that it puts you up against the national reporters from the networks and the top newspapers, the people who are on the Sunday-morning shows and get the Times and Post bylines.

Unless you are on the same story as Jack White, who is on Providence's Channel 12, Journal reporters don't get all that much sharp competition in Rhode Island.

So it is always instructive to read the Big Foot accounts the next day to see how we do against other reporters and news organizations.