Amid all the really important stuff, lipstick on pigs, the new Sarah Palin action figure and what not, the NY Times has managed to produce two interesting reports that contrast John McCain's position and experience on education with Barak Obama's

Barak Obama, its seems is proposing a fairly detailed plan that relies on public schools, parents, unions and others to help rebuild education as a community enterprise. His plan is based on his experience as a community organizer in Chicago where he chaired a board that administered a $49 million grant for the reform of the Chicago school system.  During the time that he worked on the project, educational quality improved significantly in Chicago

McCain's plan for education is discussed in a much shorter article. To summarize:

The brevity of Mr. McCain’s plan reflects his view that the federal government should play a limited role in public education, and his commitment to holding the line on education spending, said Lisa Graham Keegan, a McCain adviser and former Arizona education commissioner.

“Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on,” Ms. Keegan said, adding that his plan’s limited scope should not be interpreted as a lack of commitment to education and school reform. “He’s been a quiet and consistent supporter of parents and educators who he thinks are making a difference.”

Now this is just a bit peculiar when we come to consider that whenever someone asks a Republican to address income inequality said Republican will immediately tell us that: Inequality is a result of a lousy educational system which the Republican party will fix.

Which fix, Wonks Anonymous finds, usually consists of tearing down what remains of our current public education system, giving people small vouchers and then unleashing a horde of entrepreneurs whose task it will be to reinvent the wheel. They will run things ever so much better than the trained professionals who currently educate our children because they are guided by the invincible ideas of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. Education spending will drop and quality will improve.

While Barak Obama was getting on the ground experience in how communities worked John McCain was getting experience in Washington, talking to other millionaires, debating legislation, like No Child Left Behind, that he would never have to implement, and imbibing free market trotskyism from the likes of Phil Gramm.

I guess that this is a choice between reality and fantasy, like so much else in this campaign.