That the education issue was weakening GOP electoral prospects became clear the day a New York Times-CBS poll reported it was top priority among undecided voters — and that twice as many Americans trusted the Democrats with it. And it’s been no solace to learn from exit polls that Bill Clinton’s education stance helped him lock up women’s votes on Election Day.

The country has come a long way from the days when Ronald Reagan and William J. Bennett were the nation’s education truth-tellers, when Democrats were part of the problem and GOP governors like Lamar Alexander and Tom Kean offered solutions. And the distance we have traveled has not been good for Republicans — or, one might add, for American schoolchildren, who are learning as little today as when the nation was declared “at risk” by a blue- ribbon commission in 1983.