Why did Bush miscalculate so badly on Social Security?

[swag]

An essay from David Warsh's "Economic Princples"

http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/05.03.13.html

Excerpts:

It is now generally recognized that President Bush has made a major mistake is his attempt to "personalize" Social Security by adding individual accounts. The Washington Post counted heads in the Senate and reported on March 10 that the measure probably wouldn't come to a vote.

Not enough attention has been paid to why Bush miscalculated.

True, there was Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan's evocative phrase -- "mission inebriation" -- to describe the high spirits and optative mood that gripped the White House after Bush's successful re-election campaign.

But that diagnosis was designed to explain the over-the-top quality of Bush's inaugural address, with its declaration that it had become the policy of the US government to root out and abolish tyranny wherever it is to be found in the world.

Why did the president immediately take a crowbar to the famously popular social old-age insurance program -- the so-called third rail of American politics -- as soon as he had been re-elected?

. . .

Yet, emotions being what they are, there is a good chance that his presidency will never recover from this first miscalculation of his second term. Ignoring Ronald Reagan's considerable success, Bush has set the Way-Back Machine for 1964, when he went off to Yale College and began to form his adult political views, and Barry Goldwater was running for president.

[sellitman]

1. He will succeed.

He just has to cheat harder.

[Warpy]

11. Right, this is the culmination of their efforts of 30 years

to obliterate a socialist program that works because it makes them look like stupid liars every time they try to demonize socialism.

This isn't a war of practicalities and they don't give a shit who gets hurt. This is pure stinking ideology.

They will bludgeon Congress with everything they have, up to and including Guckert's little black book, to get this foul, stinking plan of theirs through.

Once this little chip is inflicted, once this pittance is sucked out of the program, they will continue to raise the percentage of money sucked out of the plan until it is unsustainable.

They don't care what it does to us. They don't care about 2006, since they know they control the electoral process and what the people want no longer matters. They have become completely unaccountable.

[tom_paine]

20. I am afraid I agree n/t

[sellitman]

21. Bingo!!!

You have it figured out. "They are completely unaccountable". They own us. We have already lost and we just don't see it. I am afaid the truth is closer to this than even I care to admit.

We are fucked!!!

[German worker]

2. One man's "mistake" is another man's "calculated maneuver".

I doubt if the administration thinks they have made a mistake despite what some news organziations want us to believe.

[Bridget Burke]

13. Most of us thought Bush's vague "SS Plan" ...

Was a mistake before the news organizations did.

[FloridaPat]

3. He's rammed everything else through this way. Probably thought

it would work this time. However, don't forget. These jerks originally come out with the most unbelieveable ideas, get turned down and then come out with what they really want. The second idea sounds so good after the first insane one, that everyone goes for it, which is what they wanted in the first place.

[swag]

4. Like the bankruptcy bill you mean?

[FloridaPat]

7. Iraq invasion. Started out we were going in without UN. Then

Powell talked them into going through UN. At the end of all that, Bush could say we did the UN thing, it didn't work, now we go in. He looked like a hero and the UN loooked bad.

[still_one]

5. when a government controls the media they can spin anything they want

I would be very surprised if * doesn't get his way and destroy social security

His entire career has been built by his opponents underestimating him

[Robbien]

6. The article keeps asking the question but never puts forth any answers

It just gives us a history lesson on prior attempts to change SS.

[swag]

9. I think the author sees

Bush's adolescent ideological congealment around the "ideals" of Goldwater as the root of the "miscalculation."

[Inland]

8. Bush didn't see the difference in lying on Iraq, taxes

The Bush policiy push comes from a) we have an ideological reason for doing X and b)the people won't buy reason X so c) make up reasons they like and never mention X ever.

It's worked in the past.

On Iraq, people defer to the president in foreign affairs and matters of war, and he scared the bejesus out of us.

On taxes, people looking for a tax cut didn't care if he was lying or not. After all, it's only the deficit.

But SS benefits, he is lying about something we know better than him: OUR retirements, on how well OUR investments will do, how well SS has worked for US and OUR families.

Moreover, SS doesn't fit Bush's style of lie by oversimplification and omission. SS is easy to understand. Bush's reforms are a million different results from a million different options, with everything on the table EXCEPT two items, taxes and private accounts. Since any dope can see these two items won't help the announced problem, Bush loses again.

I suppose you could throw in that the president has shown himself to by a liar before, but in fact that never hurt him much. I think it is because not every political goal is susceptible to the Bushite MO of lying about everything and hope that some of it sticks.

[roguevalley]

10. Hubris my friends. "Annoited by God" just found out he's alone.

[whistle]

12. He has not miscalculated at all, his tactic is always to divide....

...and conquer and that's what he is attempting to accomplish with the social security debate. He has presented no details of his privatization program and fills the air with alarmist claims (i.e. social security is in crisis). The program is far from being in crisis and the evidence is overwhelming regarding this, but nobody stands up to Bush's claims. When protests and questions come from the audience where Bush appears suggesting otherwise, these people are conveniently cleared from the room.

When Bush describes what he wants to do about social security to those who are allowed to stay, he is always vague He presents only confusing non-descriptive statements about his plan and always pushes the responsibility of coming forth with details of proposed fixes back on the opposition, we democrats. We must not take the bait, but push the responsibility back on Bush to state what it is he wants to do in a clear documented written form. His social security privatization program would quickly disintegrate when the light of truth is brought over it!

[asjr]

15. He is trying to make the younger ones think

that they will be "rich" through private accounts. The stock market can make or break anyone.

[illflem]

14. New SS card to be issued

[Coastie for Truth]

16. Some theories

1. Many people stick with the "revealed" rules of their college years. He was a Goldwater Young Republican. Goldwater said "Abolish Social Security." So that got programmed in.

2. Life experiences. Bush was a classic spoiled rich kid - a Choate Legacy, a Yale legacy, a "Skull and Bones" Legacy, a Harvard Business School "Congressman's Kid" admission,skated through his Air Guard obligation, was able to obtain money for his businesses because of his family connections, and was bailed out of his business failures because of his family connections -- and never knew an elderly person who lived in a spare bedroom with their kids, or in a trailer park or collected disability. And, he is a cold guy who can project or "feel your pain."

[AllegroRondo]

17. #2 exactly right

*'s experience is that if your investments don't work, daddy will bail you out. So turning the whole SS program into an investment scheme is fine. Those of us without rich daddies to bail us out are just doing something wrong.

[Coastie for Truth]

18. Raises another issue that has been bugging me for years

The growing percentage of very wealthy people in Congress (I heard on Air American Radio over the week end that all - all 100% of the US Senate - are millionaires).

An old friend of mine - who was an Assembly member in a state where the size of an Assembly District was about 55,000 - once said that as Districts get bigger and elections get costlier -- representatives get more remote from their constituents and closer to MAJOR contributors.

[Memekiller]

19. We should stop playing defense...

Bush is sinking, throw him the anvil. Our language still makes it sound like we're on defense, and listening to Republicans sounds like they're playing offense. Bush screwed up, big time, and we can't just let him drop it and move onto other things and pay no price for this the way he took credit for health care reform that passed in Texas over his veto. We should declare ourselves the victors and portray ourselves as the ones who saved SS from the Republicans, and make sure they pay bitterly for it in the midterms.

If there was ever a time to play offense, it's now.