Choice for Me, but Not for thee: democratic presidential candidates and their kids' education.

The presidential campaign season is a bit like the airport security line: We shuffle through endless switchback rows, barked at by bureaucrats ("Remove your belts! Read about my health-care plan!"), until finally, exhausted, we get through the ordeal and can sit quietly at the Cinnabon. The only really fun parts of the experience are the early ones, before the candidates have mastered the programmed, focus-grouped facial expressions to accompany their robo-responses to questions posed by friendly campaign workers planted in the audience.

A few weeks ago, during the YouTube debate, a mischievous American asked the assembled Democratic candidates a simple question: Where would you send your kids--to public school or private school?

It was enormously fun to watch five senators squirm their way through the complicated reasons that forced them to send their kids to private school. Senator Obama explained that his kids go to a private school at the University of Chicago, because he taught there. But, he added, "there are some terrific public schools in Chicago that they could be going to." It's just that, well ... they're not.

Senator Biden explained that his sons went to Wilmington Friends School, where his sister was a teacher, following the death of his wife and daughter. Later, they went to a Catholic high school. It was an odd response: Here was a guy who clearly had nothing to apologize for--I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know this about Senator Biden; I'm even more ashamed to say that I like him a lot more now that I do know--still oozing self-justification.

Dennis Kucinich's daughter goes to public school, naturally. As do John Edwards's kids. The difference being that Kucinich's daughter probably isn't in the same league, net worth-wise, as Edwards's kids, so it probably matters a lot more to them. Put it this way: If Senator Edwards calls up, say, Brown University, and offers to donate a building one-half the size of the house he built for himself, the Edwards kids are going to Brown, even if the university has to assign some graduate student to teach them to read.

Senator Dodd's daughter, who is in kindergarten, is currently in public school. Which reminds me: Senator Dodd has a daughter in kindergarten! Senator Dodd is a 63-year-old man. I'm not sure what I think about that--part of me thinks yikes!; part of me thinks high five, old timer!--but speaking from an actuarial perspective, Senator Dodd isn't going to be as involved in his daughter's education as time marches on.

As always, though, it was Senator Clinton who delivered the signature response. Clinton--whose daughter, Chelsea, famously attended the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.--at first tried to stomp her way through the thickets. "We know," breezed debate host Anderson Cooper, "Senator Clinton, you sent your daughter to private school." Not so fast, Anderson. "No," she replied. "No?" he asked. And the rest of us thought: This is going to be interesting. Because we're all pretty sure that we remember Chelsea packing off to Sidwell Friends, but the fun part about having a Clinton around--either Clinton, ...