July 15, 2010 12:09PM # Return of the Principal-in-Chief By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE According to a [*Fort Worth Star-Telegram* report](http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/13/2333556/obama-plans-to-again-speak-to.html), President Obama plans to reprise last year’s hotly debated role as [Principal-in-Chief ](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10511)to help kick off the coming school year. Will he have the Department of Education once again put out leading and Obama-aggrandizing [study guides](https://www.cato.org/2009/09/02/thanks-for-the-wakeup-call-mr-president/)? Will he again take personal credit for getting computers and other goodies into your kids’ schools? Will this address look as much like a campaign event as the last one? Will he tell all the kids that the really noble thing to do is [get government jobs](https://www.cato.org/2010/05/17/president-just-cant-leave-them-kids-alone/)? We don’t know the answers to these pressing questions yet, but we do know one thing: If he really does plan to play Principal — or maybe [Motivational-Speaker ](http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27607912)– in-Chief again, it will be both [unconstitutional](https://www.cato.org/2009/10/27/the-constitution-not-that-old-thing/), and unacceptable to a whole lot of people. For a refresher on last year’s spectacle, by the way, check out this terrific “Cato Weekly Video” installment on it: ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).