Recycled rhetoric
Bush's huge gamble on dismantling the cornerstone of the New Deal will fail. And if the Democrats remain disciplined, his defeat will be profound.

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By Sidney Blumenthal

March 3, 2005 | The coming defeat of President Bush on Social Security will be the defining moment in domestic policy and politics for his second term and for the future of the Republican Party. It will be a central, clarifying event because Bush alone chose to make this fight.

Campaigning in 2004 on the trauma of Sept. 11, he won by the smallest margin of any incumbent president in American history. The Electoral College map was little changed from the deadlock of 2000. While Bush barely took two states he had lost before (Iowa and New Mexico), he lost one to John Kerry -- New Hampshire. Bush's political advisor, Karl Rove, had forecast a fundamental realignment that would establish Republican dominance, but Bush's desperate political position required a series of tactics of character assassination against the Democratic candidate and culture war gambits on gay marriage, atmospherically organized around the fear factor of Sept. 11. The outcome was a strategic victory but not a structural one, and Bush's campaign further polarized the country.

In the chasm between his meager win and his grandiose ambition, Bush might have decided to form a government containing some moderate Republican and Democratic Cabinet members, claiming that the gravity of foreign crisis demanded national unity. But the thought never occurred to him. Instead, he bulled ahead in the hope of realizing the realignment that eluded him in the election.

Not since 1928, when Herbert Hoover was elected in a landslide, have the Republicans held the White House and such majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Bush acts with the urgency of a president for whom this political advantage must be seized now or lost forever. So he has decided to swing a sledgehammer at the cornerstone of the New Deal and the Democratic Party. The gamble would pay off in closely tying to the Republican Party the Wall Street banks that would finance the transition costs of privatization and the bond houses and stock firms that would be flush with new investments. But, most important, it would unravel the fact and idea of government insurance programs providing for the needs of the people as a whole. Once Social Security was cut into pieces, the Democrats would be left defensively representing the least politically powerful and most vulnerable -- literally the lame and the halt, the poor single mothers ("welfare queens") and minorities. The Democrats would be drawn and quartered on the wheel of broken entitlements.

Bush launched his initiative to privatize Social Security with a bang, promoting it in his State of the Union address and stumping the country at rallies. Rove has been put in charge of organizing the campaign as an extension of the 2004 effort. From the White House, Rove directs the lobbyists of K Street in Washington and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association and the religious right. Suddenly, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have reappeared as warriors against the pro-Social Security AARP, smearing the seniors organization as anti-military and pro-gay marriage. And Tony Feather, a Republican consultant with longtime ties to Rove, has reemerged with a war chest of millions to spend through a front group called Progress for America, just as he did against Kerry.

Even the Social Security Administration has been inducted in the campaign. Five years ago, it sent out a routine annual booklet titled "The Future of Social Security": "Will Social Security be there for you? Absolutely." Now a new booklet has been mailed to tens of millions warning: "Social Security must change to meet future challenges." And it suggests that Social Security should not be regarded as a "foundation on which to build your financial future."

And yet the more the public has learned of Bush's plan, the more it has buckled. Poll after poll reveals that increased information leads to heightened resistance. Growing majorities oppose Bush's program, Bush's favorability rating has plunged to the lowest level of any president at this point in his second term, and trust in the Democrats has steadily risen.

In the face of public rejection, Bush retreats and attacks at the same time. He has announced that he is uncertain when or even if he will propose his own bill before Congress, while the White House says that the president will stage new rallies for the Social Security initiative that has yet to take any practical form.

Republican leaders have become studies in hesitation and anxiety. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist declares that the "pacing" should be "determined by the American people." In a statement as fuzzy as he could manage, he explained, "In terms of whether it will be a week, a month, six months or a year as to when we bring something to the floor, it's just too early."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, rhetorically echoing Saddam Hussein ("mother of all battles"), called Social Security the "mother of all issues." He added, "And it is going to take a lot of dialogue with the American people." When Tom "the Hammer" DeLay, who hangs a whip on his wall, pleads for understanding, the problem must be that the American people understand too much already.

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