I suppose it’s possible that — as critics have suggested — President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security failed because Americans rejected the idea outright. That is, we’d rather have a system that’s an intergenerational wealth redistributor which can be raided at the whims of Congress than a system that gives people ownership of the money they “donate,” and lets them pass it on to their kids. In a much-ballyhooed article in the Weekly Standard, for example, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, wrote:

But a larger problem is that even the more idealistic aspects of the GOP program–Bush’s vision of an “ownership society,” the pursuit of a politically risky Social Security privatization plan–have been ill-suited to the present political climate, and to the mood of the American people. It’s not just that the American people have shown little appetite of late for dramatically shrinking the scope of the federal government, or taking more economic responsibility into their own hands–it’s that there’s shrinking support for such goals among reliable Republican voters.

I find that unlikely. The problem with all of these ideas isn’t the with the ideas themselves, it’s with the way they were articulated. The White House chose to pursue Social Security, for example, by taking to the road with complicated, green-eyeshade facts and figures that were either countered with competing facts and figures from critics, or bored audiences to sleep. Or both.

Of course, the problem’s compounded when Bush is your communicator-in-chief. Here, for example, is the president’s answer to a question last February about funding the transition to a private accounts plan during one of those staged “town hall” meetings:

Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised.

Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

Keep in mind, this is what he had ready for a staged Q&A, where all the questioners and questions were pre-screened.

I’m not mocking Bush. Communication is important, especially if you’re trying to communicate important ideas. Because if you botch them, or half-ass them, you not only lose the debate, but you poison the ideas themselves for a generation (on the half-ass side, how long do you think it’ll be before a politicians recommends deregulating electricty again?). Seems to me it’s going to be awhile before any politician takes up private accounts again.

Social Security was the one reason we limited government types were supposed to continue to cling to Bush, despite his first-term failure in just about every other limited government area. Now, as we heard in the State of the Union, Social Security reform deflated from a radical plan to make the government start treating Americans like adults who are capable of managing their own retirement accounts to yet another “Blue Ribbon Commission” that’ll spend a couple million bucks to tell us what we already know — Social Security is in trouble, and the politicians don’t have the stones to do a damn thing about it. Swell.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 4:55 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.