Here is the story of the greatest battle ever fought in American education-putting education in the President's Cabinet. The three-year drive to create the U.S. Department of Education pitted the nation's two largest teacher unions against each other, President Jimmy Carter against conservative Republicans, and tested the American tradition of local control against an emerging federal role in education. Told through the eyes of a young man, fresh out of college and in the center of the battle from his position on the U.S. Senate staff, CABINETMAKERS reveals the Washington political process unlike any other book ever written.