One of the more awkward moments of Mitt Romney’s speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention came during the newly minted presidential candidate’s question-and-answer session with the audience.
The audience followed Romney’s script — at least according to the campaign’s version of the candidate’s prepared text — during the first two questions of the exchange:
“Does the America we want borrow a trillion dollars from China?” Romney asked. “No,” the crowd cheered.
“Does it fail to find the jobs that are needed for 23 million people and for half the kids graduating from college?” Romney asked. “No,” the crowd screamed.
But then, a stumper: “Are its schools lagging behind the rest of the developed world?” Romney asked. According to Romney’s prepared remarks, the answer to that question is a steadfast “No.” But the audience wasn’t quite as sure, and it was harder to make out a unified response.
That might be because Romney’s own education platform — and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s own RNC speech the night before — would answer that question with a resounding “yes.”
While Romney hasn’t made education a key feature of his campaign, he did pivot to the issue for one day in May during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That day, the Romney campaigned issued a white paper expounding in some detail on his views on America’s schools.
“There is no more critical issue facing the United States than the need for education reform,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) wrote in the paper’s foreword. “Despite spending more on public education than virtually every other nation, our students’ math and science achievement lags well behind that of their peers abroad.”