Strange Days
…is for good men to do nothing…
…and bad men to get really, really busy.
A harmonic convergence of Bush badness is gathering over Washington: Social Security reform, the nuclear option, and the campaign against judicial “activism”.
I always thought that Bush’s Social Security roadshow was a diversion, meant to focus Democratic ire and anxiety on our dingdong prez while the real work of the 105th Congress — cutting taxes and gutting the regulatory apparatus — proceeded apace.
While we are congratulating ourselves on Bush’s collapse in the approval polls, the Congress passed the estate tax abolition, the bankruptcy bill, drilling in ANWR, and a bunch of other things we probably haven’t even heard about.
So little time, so much to do.
In fact, I read somewhere that big-business anxiety about the nuclear option has less to do with principled concern about what happens to the social and political fabric of our nation than panic that retaliatory obstructionism by the Democrats might endanger the holy work of the 105th Congress — a campaign of unprecedented scope to enrich the wealthy and deregulate business under the leadership of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist.
There are only a few precious months left before disgusted voters might impose the severest electoral sanctions on this spectacularly corrupt and contemptible Republican Congress.
So there will be a frantic stampede to the trough over the next 15 months.
It’s up to Bush and Rove to provide political cover on the moderate side.
So there will be more social security reform.
Bigger and better than the pathetic and hesitant performance to date.
The sixty-day Social Security reform tour certainly was not a triumph for the Bush juggernaut. It turned into more of an out-of-town tryout, testing messages, opposition response, and Democratic resolve.
The classic Rove wedge of old vs. young didn’t take hold, as America inexplicably concentrated on the genuine policy implications of reaming out the system with private accounts while piling on another trillion dollars of debt.
The idea that Bush had a plausible intention and workable plan to “fix” Social Security never took hold.
Rove has therefore decided to take the risk of finally showing the cloven hoof and push for the destruction of Social Security as a meaningful old-age retirement entitlement for the middle class.
He’s rejiggered the message as a direct wedge against the Democratic Party.
Based on Bush’s press conference, the new approach will be:
Holding the line for benefits on the very poor by retaining wage-based indexing for low income levels.
Destroying Social Security as a meaningful entitlement for the middle class by cutting back its benefits by a switch to wage-based indexing.
Placating the middle class with private accounts — a personal tax shelter.
Convincing the American public that the Bush tax cuts have already gutted Social Security as we know it.
Then, Karl Rove tees up the Democrats for the Machiavellian finish:
Social Security becomes stigmatized as just another form of welfare for poor people.
The program becomes increasingly unpopular when the combination of Bush-induced deficits and transition costs sends the federal budget deep into the dumper.
The Democratic Party gets the thankless job of protecting the new, improved Social Security and gets turned into political punching bag.
Game over!
The whole private accounts boondoggle reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush “reform” plan.
In any form, private accounts simply deepen the fiscal hole that Bush pretends he’s trying to fill.
But Bush needs the distraction and deception inherent in trying to guess the future return for private accounts.
Otherwise, Bush’s cynical refusal to raise taxes to remedy the Social Security shortfall has a very simple, straightforward, and unpopular consequence: an unambiguous benefit cut for the middle class.
And it would be painfully clear that Bush, instead of trying to “save” Social Security, really only wants to destroy it.
So Bush can’t give up private accounts.
But I expect there will be a new wrinkle.
When poll numbers dictate, I expect Bush to abandon the pretense that clawback private accounts can contribute to the solvency of the Social Security system.
Instead, private accounts will reappear as an add-on: nothing more than a new tax cut, a new tax shelter offered as a sweetener to the middle class to compensate for benefit cuts, without any pretense that private accounts will somehow improve the solvency of Social Security.
In other words, a bribe. And a trap for the optimistic, the unwary, and the foolish.
Bush might be able to sell this approach if he could present himself as responsible steward of the nation’s future, ready to make the revolutionary 21st choices that the reactionary Democrats, mired in 20th Century preconceptions, refuse to envisage.
However, in a development that must have Karl Rove gnashing his teeth, the Republican Party has to spend the next few weeks demonstrating that it is hostage to the 19th century dingbat wing of the religious right.
The Terri Schiavo mess displayed Boy Leader as an uncertain, unprincipled opportunist instead of that compassionate, sagacious life-loving god-worshiping patriarch that he imagines himself to be.
And just when the White House would like memories of that fiasco fade, ohmygawd Bill Frist decides his lame-o presidential hopes needs some of that religious right mojo and jumps into the whole activist judge mess.
If the Democrats handle it right, they can turn the next few weeks into a national referendum on whether a Republican Party in thrall to the religious right should be allowed to simultaneously void the last remaining checks and balances we have in the political system (the filibuster for the minority and an independent judiciary) and unilaterally dictate the form of our retirement system.
We can’t trust George Bush with our government today.
How can we trust him with our future?
If we can draw the line here, I think the Bush pretense of inevitability and invincibility will crumble under the weight of its own error and dishonesty. A principled, united Democratic opposition willing to take the political heat can put this corrupt administration and its lame-duck president on the defensive.
It’s our turn now.
It’s time for the good men and women of our party and our nation to get busy.
Really, really busy.
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
