Blood-Stained Badges In The Dirt

Michelle Rhee is a hated woman. She went into a system almost paralyzed under the weight of politics and pressures and stirred the genesis of a revolution.

I have no doubt that she made a lot of mistakes. Outwardly, she has all the warmth and compassion of a Transformer. In her and Adrian Fenty's amazing Wall Street Journal "Education Manifesto," Rhee admits she should have done a better job at communicating her goals, her hopes, her intentions, to the parties most invested and at risk under her fiefdom. Rhee might have failed to win them over no matter what, but she should have tried harder regardless.

What is already clear, however, and what cannot be reasonably denied, is that Michelle Rhee has forever changed the educational landscape in what has long been the worst educational district in this country. She is a modern-day Pale Rider or the Wyatt Earp of Tombstone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if ol’ Clint one day directs a movie about her.

Rhee (1) is brilliant; (2) was convicted about her responsibilities; and (3) was willing to put her career on the line. She walked into the saloon, a big ol’ 10-gallon hat shading her face, a steady hand on the butt of her trusty six-shooter, and politely told the drunkards she was the new sheriff in town.

Before she showed up, the numbers were in all ways horrifying. The numbers indicated the educational equivalent of a post-apocalyptic landscape of bandits, marauders, and hopeless helpless innocents hiding in their homes and eating scraps the mice left behind.

Today, the numbers are still horrifying. But noticeably and indubitably less horrifying than they used to be. It went from the Black Knight without arms and legs and bleeding to death to a Black Knight with one arm, more confidently asserting that “I’m getting bettah.” And Rhee is the catalyst for those improvements.

Michelle Rhee is an old school classic hero of the sort the 21st Century doesn’t accept and might not even want. She chose a thankless career.

Three years later, she is (temporarily) unemployed. Go to any story about Rhee on educationweek.com, and you will most certainly find dozens of teachers across the country – good, dedicated, intelligent people – writing about her as if she might well be the Antichrist. They question her motives. They question her “success.”

And good for them. She deserves scrutiny and skepticism. But in a decade, the educational history books will point to this moment and her role in it and say, “Rhee’s tenure in D.C. was the tipping point of what would become largest educational reform movement in over a century.”

Part II:

Take everything I just wrote about Michelle Rhee and education, and you can replace her with Barack Obama, and you can replace education with health care.

Thirty years from now, the way our government and our corporations handle health care will be drastically different from what it is today. It will be almost nothing like the plans Obama’s legislation intends for it to become.

Barack Obama was elected captain of the Titanic. When it comes to health care in this country, we’ve been aiming straight at an iceberg for 50 years. Almost every sane person in this idiotic country admits that the system is powerfully flawed and getting worse. A dude finally comes along and turns the steering wheel, and everyone screams at him.

They say the plan is flawed. Fine, and true.

But what they hate about Obama is that his solution isn’t their solution. Nevermind that they never had a solution until he forced them to make some shit up on the fly.

Thirty years from now, when health care in this country is drastically and measurably better than it is today – more affordable, no longer the responsibility of employers, and probably less tolerant of high-cost end-of-life treatments – we will look back at Obama’s health care law as the catalyst. They will say, “He got a lot of things wrong, but damn if he didn’t force the evolution to begin when no one else had the guts. And if he didn’t take that first step, we never get to where we are today.”

In reality, heroes don’t get everything right. In reality, heroes rarely get medals or adulation until after they’ve been martyred or marginalized. Real heroes are willing to risk more than the rest of us to achieve what everyone says they want but no one has the balls to do. Neither of these people did it alone, but they were the cornerstones of the effort, and their sense of conviction is what pulled many to their cause.

I don’t have to admire every detail of Rhee’s education reform to exalt her courage to spearhead it in the first place. I don’t like half of Obama’s health care legislation, but I absolutely glorify his risking a career’s worth of political capital to force change.

Rhee and Obama are currently facing the fate of heroes. They are being castigated, stoned, and despised by the very people they aim to help.

Such is the cost of heroism in the real world.