How has conventional wisdom gotten this so wrong? Well, in
large part it’s the result of decades of scare-mongering about Social
Security’s future from conservative ideologues, whose ultimate goal is
to undermine the program.
Thus, in 2005, the Bush administration tried to push through a
combination of privatization and benefit cuts that would, over time,
have reduced Social Security to nothing but a giant 401(k). The
administration claimed that this was necessary to save the program,
which officials insisted was “heading toward an iceberg.”
But the administration’s real motives were, in fact,
ideological. The anti-tax activist Stephen Moore gave the game away
when he described Social Security as “the soft underbelly of the
welfare state,” and hailed the Bush plan as a way to put a “spear”
through that soft underbelly.
Fortunately, the scare tactics failed. Democrats in Congress
stood their ground; progressive anualysts debunked, one after another,
the phony arguments of the privatizers; and the public made it clear
that it wants to preserve a basic safety net for retired Americans.
That should have been that. But what Jonathan Chait of The New
Republic calls “entitlement hysteria” never seems to die. In October,
The Washington Post published an editorial castigating Hillary Clinton
for, um, not being panicky about Social Security — and as we’ve seen,
nonsense like the claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme seems to
be back in vogue.
Which brings us back to Mr. Obama. Why would he, in effect,
play along with this new round of scare-mongering and devalue one of
the great progressive victories of the Bush years?
I don’t believe Mr. Obama is a closet privatizer. He is,
however, someone who keeps insisting that he can transcend the
partisanship of our times — and in this case, that turned him into a
sucker.
Mr. Obama wanted a way to distinguish himself from Hillary
Clinton — and for Mr. Obama, who has said that the reason “we can’t
tackle the big problems that demand solutions” is that “politics has
become so bitter and partisan,” joining in the attack on Senator
Clinton’s Social Security position must have seemed like a golden
opportunity to sound forceful yet bipartisan.
But Social Security isn’t a big problem that demands a
solution; it’s a small problem, way down the list of major issues
facing America, that has nonetheless become an obsession of Beltway
insiders. And on Social Security, as on many other issues, what
Washington means by bipartisanship is mainly that everyone should come
together to give conservatives what they want.
We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and
partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists —
which is the case for many issues today — you end up being played for a
fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama.