Bush Meets Second Term Resistance

For four years, George Bush has pretty much gotten his way with Congress.

Big tax cuts? Congress said yes, again and again. War in Iraq? Be my guest. Budget-busting prescription drug bill? Whatever you say, Mr. President. Tort reform? Here's the bill you asked for, sir.

But now his Social Security plan is in deep trouble, with even many Republicans distancing themselves from the proposal or muttering about how it should be put off by a year or ten. How did this happen? What happened to the vaunted White House political machine? A brief recap:

1. There was no great public hunger for the plan. People are generally satisfied with the retirement system, even though they're uneasy about its long-term health.

2. Bush offered few specifics during the campaign, so he can't claim a mandate.

3. The plan is complicated, making it impossible to explain in a couple of sound bites. See Hillarycare, 1994.

4. The administration had to admit that creating private accounts wouldn't do a thing to bolster the near-term solvency of Social Security. In other words, it wouldn't fix the "crisis" the president was trumpeting, at least for several decades.

5. In fact, the plan would worsen the $400-billion-plus federal deficit by requiring a trillion or two in "transition costs." That's a tough sell at a time when red ink is gushing, Medicare costs are exploding and Medicaid is on the chopping block.

6. The Democrats decided to just say no. Taking a page from Gingrich, Newt, 1994, they have stuck together, refused to compromise and generally let Republicans twist slowly in the wind. (It was interesting to see Tom DeLay complaining about how Dems won't come to the table when the House Repubs generally ignore them in pushing things through.)

7. Republicans went home to their districts and got an earful about the unpopularity of the Bush plan.

8. The polls showed the plan to be a loser, and everyone in Washington obsessively reads polls.

None of this is to suggest that the plan is dead or that a compromise can't be hammered out (although one such proposal, creating private accounts as an add-on, blows a bigger hole in the deficit while doing nothing to shore up the system). But it explains why Bush isn't having much luck pushing this boulder up the Hill.

The president, for his part, begs to differ, as this New York Times account makes clear:

"President Bush dismissed the notion Thursday that his campaign to create private accounts in Social Security was in serious trouble, asserting he was still 'at the early stages of the process.'

"Vowing to push ahead and acknowledging that 'I've got a lot more work to do,' Mr. Bush said he was open to ideas from both parties and tried again to allay the fears widespread in his own party that Social Security was 'the third rail of politics.' . . .

"Senate Democrats seemed unworried. They said they would work with Mr. Bush on Social Security only if he would 'publicly and unambiguously announce' that he rejected his proposal for private investment accounts financed by payroll tax revenues."

The New Republic's Noam Scheiber looks ahead to winners and losers, questioning "whether Republicans will pay a political price for having raised privatization as an issue and then abandoned it when the going got tough. Ron Brownstein alluded to this question in his column on Monday when he suggested that conservatives might be 'less interested in striking a deal than provoking a stalemate they can use as an issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections.'

"This strikes me as a little far-fetched, since invoking a stalemate over privatization as an election issue would require raising the subject of privatization. And the whole reason the GOP might have to walk away from privatization is that it's so unpopular politically. But, then, stranger things have happened. (I guess the GOP could run on vague rhetoric about having tried to save Social Security. But Democrats could always respond by saying Republicans really wanted to slash benefits, which seems to me to end the discussion.)

"On the other hand, it's not clear that Democrats benefit directly from killing privatization so quickly. . . .

"The real impact here, I think, is psychological. If privatization fails -- particularly so early on -- both congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans will realize Bush is no longer invulnerable. Republicans members of Congress will stop snapping to attention when the White House calls. Democrats will feel emboldened to oppose the administration on any number of other initiatives. Suddenly the whole dynamic of congressional debates changes."

Surf the Web this morning and every site has a shot of the newly sprung Martha heading for her helicopter:

"When it comes to rejuvenating regimens, a week of massages and facials would do most of us wonders. But for Martha Stewart, the diva of domesticity, Canyon Ranch has nothing on the big house," says USA Today.

"Stewart's amazing makeover wrapped up just after midnight, when she left the confines of West Virginia's Alderson Federal Prison Camp (where she scrubbed toilets) and headed for the rarefied sod of her estate in Bedford, N.Y. (where roads are unpaved in deference to the horses of tony townsfolk). . . .

"Surprised at her rapid journey from convicted felon to reality TV star? Don't be. In America, the currency that counts is sizzle -- and right now, Stewart's smoking."

So there you have it: Lying to investigators is a good career move.

Salon's Andrew Leonard is a wee bit more skeptical:

"Martha Stewart is back among the living, with two TV shows on the way, and the welcome matt brushed clean at her New York headquarters, proving once again that she was always in control, even when behind bars. It won't be long before she will be doling out homemaking wisdom to her millions of fans, unruffled in trademark fashion, as if this latest setback was nothing more than a typical home-and-garden misfortune, like gophers in the daffodil beds.

"And for this, we are supposed to be grateful, admiring even. Because all true Martha fans know that she was made an example of. She was a strong woman who gave money to Democratic politicians, and thus she had to be taken down. What she did, we are told, wasn't so bad, certainly nothing compared to the Ken Lays and Bernie Ebbers of the world. So she may have obstructed justice a little, and quite possibly engaged in a bit of insider trading. Big deal! You gotta break some eggs if you want to make a stir-fried lobster omelet, right? No one ever said becoming a billionaire while offering rose napkin folding tips was going to be easy!

"Piffle. Martha's slap on the wrist -- the minimum sentence she could possibly receive, given the crime she was convicted of committing -- was the least she deserved, if not for this incident, then for her lifelong record as a ruthless businesswoman. Martha's climb to power and glory came on the back of betrayed friendships, bullied and abused employees, and unrestrained egomania. And all in the service of what? Selling a luxury lifestyle fantasy that few real working women -- or men -- could ever achieve, without unlimited credit at Home Depot and a bevy of maids and gardeners."

Piffle! Now there's a dismissive word.

Rupert Murdoch's son was among those scoring an Oval Office interview for the New York Post: "President Bush told the New York Post yesterday that Syria must pull all of its troops out of Lebanon by May so that the now-occupied nation can have free elections.

" 'The subject that is most on my mind right now is getting Syria out of Lebanon, and I don't mean just the troops out of Lebanon, I mean all of them out of Lebanon, particularly the secret service out of Lebanon -- the intelligence services,' he said."

Is it time for the left to give Bush his foreign-policy due? Slate's Fred Kaplan thinks so:

"A question is haunting the blue states of America: Could George W. Bush be right? Is freedom indeed 'on the march'? Did the war in Iraq uncork a white tornado that's whooshing democracy across the region and beyond?

"In just the past two months, free elections were held in Palestine and Iraq; a rigged election was overturned and an honest one re-held in Ukraine; the Egyptian president pledged to hold competitive elections soon, too; and a popular uprising against Syria's occupation of Lebanon forced Beirut's puppet government to resign -- all this, amid President Bush's proclamation that the main aim of American foreign policy is to advance the cause of global freedom.

"It's a huge stretch to view these uprisings as a seamless wave of democracy; but it would go too far in the other direction to see them as strictly discrete events, each unrelated to the other. The evidence suggests that we're seeing at least a stream of wavelets; that the participants in one country have been inspired to take action, at least in part, by the example of participants in other countries. . . . While it's absurd to think that Bush set the upheavals of '05 in motion, it's churlish not to grant him any credit at all."

By the way, I've seen nothing in the major papers, and only a few mentions on cable, of Robert Byrd appearing to liken GOP tactics to Hitler, which he now denies, even though Jewish groups have demanded an apology ("Hideous" and "outrageous," says the ADL.) Why is the press giving Byrd a pass?

Daily Kos has challenged me to admit that getting day passes into the White House press room -- you know, the kind that Jeff Gannon used for two years -- is harder than I thought for online types. Okay, I admit it. This tale from FishbowlDC, the gossip column for Media Bistro, shows the difficulty of penetrating 1600 Penn:

"Day two, strike two. . . . Last week we came up with the idea of reporting on the White House's morning gaggle where Jim 'Jeff Gannon' Guckert suddenly got so famous a month ago. We've been trying since Monday to get one of the 'easy and available' day passes that allowed Gannon access for two years. No such luck.

"On the up side, we seem to be getting stonewalled at a higher level than before. When we tried calling the White House Press Office this morning a very non-perky young woman told us: 'Oh, if you're with Fishbowl D.C. you need to talk directly to Media Affairs.' We never even got a chance to explain what Fishbowl was! . . .

"Expressing some frustration with two days of stonewalls, we asked to hold while she tried to track someone down since everyone was (yet again) in a meeting, but Jenny politely told us she couldn't tie up the line. (Aside: You'd think that for something like the White House they'd be willing to splurge on having enough phone lines.)."

Day three: "A brief recap of the last three days of our quest to get a one day press pass to cover a White House briefing:

"Fishbowl: 0

"White House: 3

"Total Phone Calls Placed: 17

"Total Phone Calls Returned: 0

"Total Non-Interns We've Spoken With: 0

"Trips to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: 1

"Humiliation Factor: Low

"Frustration Factor: High"

Sure, they're just gossip columnists. But Scott McClellan says anyone writing for a legitimate audience should be allowed access. So why is Gannon's Talon News any more legitimate than Media Bistro?

With Dan Rather moving on next week, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan serves up advice for CBS and the other networks:

"First, stop being mesmerized by Cronkiteism. Second, put your money in the field. Third, put down that copy of the New York Times. . . .

"Soon CBS will replace Dan Rather. They should hire a reasonable journalist at a reasonable price and then build a sterling, stellar broadcast around him. They should save the money they'd spend on a star and put it in the show.

"They should forgo the temptation to blow out all the stops and drag the new anchor to every market in America as the new face of CBS News. They should forgo the temptation to spend a fortune on commercials promoting him. Just put him in there and let America find him. . . .

"CBS should also forgo the temptation to spend millions and millions on a new set, new graphics and new theme music. Message to the executive producer: No one in America cares about a new set or new graphics. When focus groups say they notice such things, it's only because such things have been shoved in their faces and a response requested. New anchors get new sets because anxious producers need something they can point at...It's a way of covering up the fact that you don't have a clue.

"So take all that money and get yourselves some talented, hungry correspondents. A lot of them. They should be all over Africa, South America, the Mideast and Europe, with talented crews. . . .

"I worked at CBS 20 years ago and what was true of us then is true now, and true of every other network newsroom: They key evening news coverage off the front page of the New York Times . . . the Times is now simply an esteemed newspaper. And more and more it plays to a niche, Upper West Side liberals wherever they are. . . . Worse, it kills creativity and enterprise. And it makes the news boring. Who wants a 7 p.m. newscast that reflects the newspaper that hit the Internet 18 hours earlier?"

NYT Editor Bill Keller has still more thoughts in his dialogue about blogging with Jeff Jarvis:

"It's striking that there seems to be no end to any argument in your world. Every grievance is recycled endlessly, not necessarily spiraling up to a higher level of enlightenment but starting over and over from scratch. It's Groundhog Day."

He should see my e-mail.

"It is massively inclusive but everyone brings to it an individual appetite and a sense of entitlement, regardless of whether they have done the homework. You can join the discussion from a position of raw, opinionated ignorance. Sometimes the result is less a conversation than a clamor. Last time, I expressed some frustration that thrice-removed versions of something I said had scattered across the digital globe and prompted reactions that bore no relation to anything I had actually said or thought.

"Your solution, if I get your drift, was that I should go blog-to-blog, dropping in and conversing, winning friends and setting the record straight. Easy for you to say, since you seem to live without sleep. By the same standard, I could probably win friends for The Times by going door to door in Queens, extolling and explaining the paper to prospective readers, but is that the best use of my time?"