Sour Grapes

David Brooks presumptive obituary for Social Security Reform made me laugh! The only way to get through to these rock-headed ideological Republicans is with a baseball bat, it seems. But at least the Democratic message is beginning to filter through: Strengthen, don't "reform," Social Security!

Having skimmed decades of private-account proposals, Republicans did not appreciate how unfamiliar this idea would seem to many people. They didn't appreciate how beloved Social Security is, and how much they would have to show they love it, too, before voters would trust them to reform it. In their efforts to create a risk-taking, dynamic society, they didn't appreciate how many people, including conservatives, value security and safety.

If you wanted to see a real risk-taking, dynamic society, Gilded-Age America (1867 - 1901) was that very society: formaldehyde in canned meat, industrial accidents, bank panics, industrial monopolies, trade wars - name the hazard, we had it in abundance! People don't want to go back to all that! But I digress.....

Furthermore, Republicans didn't really have a strategy to get their proposals through Congress. They seemed to think that if the president held enough town hall meetings around the country, they could somehow bulldoze the Democrats.

Bulldozing worked for the Iraqi war, where so much of the critical information was secret, but it can't here, where the critical information is widely-available. Republicans will HAVE to negotiate, in good faith, with real-live Democrats, some of them LIBERAL Democrats, to accomplish anything. This is the high-water mark of bulldozing!

But Republican leaders have never really developed the skills required for cross-party horse-trading. Today's Republicans emerged in response to the ideological politics of the 1960's and were forged in the anti-political populism of the 1994 revolution. These anti-political creatures of conviction find sticking to orthodoxy easier than the art of compromise.

No shit!

The Democrats are still traumatized by their own losses. They are focused on past defeats, not future opportunities, and interested in revenge, not governing and accomplishment.

Not traumatized, just smarter. Democrats have decided to stop playing Charlie Brown, to stop believing Lucy's repeated story about letting us kick the football for once, and stomp on her instead.

When Social Security reform was broached, the party leaders went to the F.D.R. Memorial, as if the glory days of the 1930's were the guideposts for the 21st century.

If times change, Democrats will change with them. Regarding Social Security, times haven't changed. So we won't!

Meanwhile, the party base has grown militant with rage. The Howard Dean hotheads declare that they hate the evil Republicans, making compromise seem like collaborating with Satan. The militants, bloggers and polemicists have waged a relentless pressure campaign on any moderates who might even be thinking of offering constructive ideas.

The party base has good reason to get militant with rage. We are tired of being sold down river by some of our erstwhile friends (Lieberman, Lieberman, Lieberman!) As Truman used to say, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Sensing the inadequacy of the first Bush approach, many Republicans have floated brave concessions. Several leading Republicans proposed a big payroll tax increase for the upper class and upper-middle class. Senator Robert Bennett suggested progressively indexing benefits to protect the poor and working class from cost-saving steps.

Oh so brave, these "concessions!" Remember, FDR bomb-proofed Social Security by removing ANY aspect of means-testing for Social Security. Means-testing would weaken the program, because then it could be characterized as a WELFARE program (no doubt favored by drug-addicted, ghetto-livin', mulatto drag-queens in Cadillacs), and open it to further conservative attack. FDR wasn't going to have any of it. Thank God!

These offers are more progressive than any Republicans have made before or are likely to make again. But the Democrats played the Yasir Arafat role at Camp David. They made no counteroffers. They offered no plan. They just said no.

Applaud the progressive Republicans! But remember, Democrats don't HAVE to offer a plan! AT ALL! The ADMINISTRATION is in charge! It is THEIR RESPONSIBILITY to offer a plan! Which they have yet to do!

Instead, many made demagogic speeches about Republican benefit cuts, as if it is possible to fix the system without benefit cuts. Many ginned up the familiar scare tactics designed to frighten the elderly.

Modest tax increases, even decades from now, will be adequate to safeguard the program. And there is no sign the elderly are frightened. They are taking at face value Bush's vow that their benefits will be unaffected. They are worried about their kids, though, and their benefits, and that's why they are increasingly fighting Bush's proposals.

If Social Security reform fails - and obviously I hope this obit becomes obsolete - it will be many years before any sort of big entitlement reform will come up again. The parties will keep playing chicken, and we will soon find ourselves catastrophically buried under our own debt.

Big entitlement reform will come up again and again in the years ahead, because Medicare and Medicaid are in major crisis (unlike Social Security), and those problems, at a minimum, will have to be addressed. But why place the responsibility for society's debt at the feet of Social Security alone? There were those big Bush tax cuts for zillionaires, after all!

Oh, yes, there's one more group to be criticized: the American voters. For the past 30 years, Americans have wanted high entitlement spending and low taxes. From the looks of things today, they - or more precisely their children - are going to live with the consequences.

Losers always blame the voters! But, hell, it's their government, after all! That's what a democracy is all about!

The long-range consequences are that if Social Security can't be cut (like Greenspan is counting on), something else will have to be cut (or taxes will have to be raised, preferably on those feckless zillionaires). Or else we'll have a currency crisis. Or perhaps all three (you can almost feel laconic Greenspan beginning to panic, just about now!) But through whatever chaos ensues, Social Security will be the Rock of Gibraltar, just as FDR designed it, for those supposedly-oh-so-obsolete 1930's!