This article asserts that just as Senator Phil Graham of Texas encouraged his colleagues to "dance with the gal you brung," while exhorting them to vote one way or another on some volatile issue, so too has career and technical education (CTE) over the past 20 years. The author evaluates the ideologically based economic and educational policies of the last 20 years and their respective outcomes on CTE and the educational community. It is concluded that the social contract and safety net that sustain the nation--welfare, Medicare, Social Security, education, labor rights--are torn and stressed to capacity. The tax base that sustained these public goods has eroded to the point where agencies for the public good vie with one another for the inadequately funded public trough, while some of the public must make choices between food and medicine, or work and family, or public assistance and education. Ultimately this leads to competition among communities which breeds conflict and distrust; and when there is no trust, the nation fails.