Reply #86: Bush is taking a huge gamble with his assault on the social contract

[dzika]

Thursday January 20, 2005

A New Deal to scupper a presidency

Bush is taking a huge gamble with his assault on the social contract

Sidney Blumenthal
The Guardian


In his second term, President Bush is determined on regime change. The country whose order he seeks to overthrow is not ruled by mullahs or Ba'athists. But members of his administration have compared its system to communism. The battle will be "one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times", the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove wrote in a confidential memo. Since the election, the president has spoken often of the "coming crisis" and he has mobilised the government to begin a propaganda campaign to prepare public opinion for the conflict ahead. The nation whose regime he is set on toppling is the United States.

Since the New Deal, the American social contract has been built upon acceptance of its reforms. When Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican president after Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, he never challenged the New Deal, solidifying the political consensus that had prevailed for decades. But now Bush has launched an assault on the social contract in earnest, seeking to blast away at its cornerstone, social security, which disburses pensions to the elderly and payments to the disabled.

The end of the election marked the start of Bush's new campaign, stumping relentlessly to replace this "flat bust, bankrupt" system by siphoning social security funds into private stock market accounts. His motive was best explained by his political aide, Peter Wehner, in his memo circulated through the White House. "For the first time in six decades, the social security battle is one we can win," Wehner wrote triumphantly in the afterglow of the election victory. "And in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

To achieve this conservative dream, the public must first be convinced that social security is "bankrupt". The administration, Wehner writes, must "establish an important premise: the current system is heading toward an iceberg. We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course". Moreover, Wehner states, the private accounts are simply a wedge for future benefit cuts, though he does not advocate that the administration stresses that point.



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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1394301,00.html