LAST WEEK, President Bush flew to Cleveland, where he dared to speak the v-word, which is to say “vouchers.”

The president long has been a supporter of vouchers. But because the term isn’t widely understood and has drawn ridicule, especially from Democrats, Bush long ago dropped the word from his active vocabulary. Even before he took office, Democratic resistance to vouchers led him to edit a voucher proposal out of his education bill, a move that facilitated its passage.