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A recent New York Times/CBS poll showed that "Democrats enjoy public confidence on most critical election issues, from health care to education to Social Security." This cannot be because Democrats have done such a good job managing health, education and welfare, because according to the Democrats themselves, every one of these systems is in crisis and needs billions of dollars to repair.

In Washington, of course, evading responsibility is an art form, so it is not always easy to tell who's responsible for which mess. But with some issues, like education policy, it's pretty clear who is the fibber and who is the goat.

To begin with, education is not principally a federal issue. More than 90 percent of each education dollar is raised and spent at the local level. Democrats, liberals and not a few Marxists have controlled most of the big-city school systems in America for the last 70 years.

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When you add the 40 years of continuous Democratic rule of Congress before Republicans took the House in '94, it's easy to see that Democrats are responsible for everything that's wrong with public schools -- at least everything that can be fixed by public policies.

Yet according to the poll, Democrats have the public's confidence on education. Education is even perceived as a "Democratic issue." How can this be?

Is it because the Democratic slander -- that Republicans don't care about education -- has some bite to it? Or that Republicans do care but don't have an answer to the failures that Democrats have fostered? Or is it that Republicans don't have programs to rescue poor and minority children from the fate to which Democrats have consigned them?

Actually, it's none of the above. Republicans have the programs, but what they don't have is the foggiest idea of how to present them to the American electorate in a way that would win its confidence. They seem clueless about how to fight this political battle.

Politics is, of course, a war conducted by other means, but Republicans shrink from having to fire a shot in the education debate. Instead, they have mentally withdrawn from the battle and allowed Democrats to position themselves as the education party. In the maneuvering over the education budget, what you hear from Democrats is that Republicans are Scrooges. All they want is tax breaks for the wealthy on the backs of the poor.

The Republican answer is a whine that says: "OK, we'll concede a little money to show we're not as hard-hearted as you say. We'll let the president have the funding he wants for 100,000 new teachers. But we have our doubts this will do the job. What we really think is that he's just paying off the unions."

What the public outside the Beltway hears from these exchanges is this: Republicans have doubts about funding education. (Any more complicated explanation is lost in the static.) Republicans may care about education, but they don't care as much as Democrats. And without the leadership of the Democrats, they wouldn't care at all.

Of course, if the education crisis could be solved by adding more teachers, who would oppose that? The problem is that Democrats have been adding teachers and dollars for decades, while the education crisis has only gotten worse.

Republicans have an explanation: You can add all the teachers and dollars you want, but if there is no connection between teachers' performances and their rewards, there is no way the result will significantly improve.

One may disagree whether "vouchers" or "opportunity scholarships" or a drastic weakening of the union lobby is the way to connect educational performance and reward so that students actually learn. But there can be no doubt that the Democratic Party, tied as it is to bankrupt policies and reactionary special interests, is the party least likely to deliver better results.

Of course, many parents are already not listening to the Republicans because the Democrats have convinced them that all Republicans care about are tax breaks for the rich. What tag have the Republicans pinned on their Democratic opponents in return? Nothing.

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