For example, at a recent school board meeting, the Our Town School Board considered a plan to restructure the junior high school into a middle school. "What's the difference?" you may ask. Instead of students going to a different teacher for every subject, as they do in high school, the same 120 students stay with four or five teachers, who work as a team to coordinate their efforts. By being self-contained, the teachers can better concentrate on the students, the students have less chances for getting into scuffles and falling through the cracks in the average public school, and parents can be more involved with the school.

     But in the entire presentation, no one ever mentioned what it would cost. That's a question I get to answer in my story about the proposal. If I had simply written about what was said, the readers would be on the phone asking that very question, "Yeah, but... what will it cost?"

     I had the same reaction to the State of the Union address, which I've been calling the State of the Onion since I was an irreverent teenager. "Yeah, but..."
 

• President Shrub wants to root out terrorism wherever it hides. Yeah, but... How do you find them? And what about those pesky gray areas, where someone is a terrorist to others but a freedom fighter to us because we need their support in delicately balanced situations?

• Shrub says we're at war, and I'm certainly not going to quibble about formal declarations of war when we haven't declared war since World War II. Wasn't Vietnam a war, even though it wasn't declared? Yeah, but... The Afghani soldiers at Guantanamo Bay are being held without the protections of the Geneva Convention. We're at war, but they aren't prisoners of war. If they are criminals, they are entitled to a lawyer and must be taken to a judge, told what they are charged with and given the opportunity to defend themselves. The judge must then decide if the evidence is strong enough to keep them for trial. If they are prisoners of war, on the other hand, then they cannot be tried for crimes, they cannot be questioned, and their treatment must meet certain guidelines set by the Geneva Convention. This is a column by itself, but every time I heard Rumsfeld, Ashcroft or Shrub talk about being at war, I think of those men we hold illegally and find it impossible to keep us on the moral high ground.

• Shrub is proud of the biggest increase in defense spending in decades, more for homeland security, for intelligence, for air travel safety, for public health efforts, for economic stimulus (Read: Tax breaks for corporations. Enron, anyone?). Yeah, but... His budget sinks us back into deficit spending until at least 2005, and that's according to the Republican estimates. Hey, I like having an extra $13 in every paycheck. But I'd rather give that up to see the country balance its checkbook. He's got the best reason in history to go back on a tax cut we can no longer afford: Sept. 11 changed everything. We don't need to raise taxes. We just need to rescind the tax break that has now put us back into negative numbers. Hell, I balanced my books better in college.

• Shrub wants to put a quality teacher in every classroom. Yeah, but... Who's going to pay those teachers? Are you going to offer high school graduates a free college education to be a teacher? Some states are doing that, but not nearly enough and with enough strings tied to the contract to make a quilt. Who's going to add more classrooms to crumbling schools so those quality teachers will have less than 40 kids in a room? Who's going to buy the textbooks so each student will have one? My son's generation - call them Generation Y for the moment - is rumored to be bigger than the baby boom. Already the number of kids entering kindergarten is staggeringly higher than the trend over the last ten years. Where are we going to put all those kids?

• Shrub wants new safeguards on 401(k) plans and retirement accounts so workers won't lose their shirts if their company fails. Yeah, but... Is he planning to give back the bushels 'o cash he personally received from Enron, as many of the Congressional Clowns are beginning to do? Is he pushing for Enron chairman Ken Lay - a close personal friend - to give back the literal billions he and the Enron corporate schmos got away with and return the pensions to Enron workers, and face the music for his financial shenanigans? Is he going to order Vice President Dick Cheney to hand over documentation of last year's energy policy development, so the General Accounting Office can determine just how much influence Enron bought for its bucks? 

• Shrub wants to establish a Freedom Corps of volunteers to help out in emergencies. Yeah, but... we already have an excellent structure of trained, professional emergency workers who do a marvelous job of keeping us safe in Our Town. We also have a Peace Corps to promote freedom and nonviolence throughout the world, an Americorps of young volunteers for public service... How many Corps do we need? Certainly this isn't just a publicity stunt to make Shrub look warm and fuzzy to the folks at home.

     I wish the television West Wing could take over the real West Wing, just for a day. For one thing, they have better writers. For another, they put the people ahead of themselves. And finally, the TV version explains how they're going to do all the wonderful things they're going to do. Knowing their audience is a critical one, they explain all sides before they forge ahead, and the good of the people comes before their own well-being.

     But that's why they're on TV. Because they're the fantasy. The reality is... President Shrub, and the state of the onion isn't so hot.