As you may have

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As you may have seen already, Drudge has a hit on John Edwards this morning, fresh — no doubt — from RNC oppo research. The claim is that Edwards now says no to putting Social Security funds in the stock market whereas in 1998 he supported the idea.

I sometimes wonder what point there is in trying to knock down this stuff from such an unreliable source. But so many in the media run with his arguments. So let me just briefly address this.

Investing any Social Security funds in the stock market looks like much less of a good idea today in the post-bubble world than it did in 1998. And any money — even the small amount Edwards seems to have supported — invested then probably would not have done so well over the next few years. So that’s a reasonable point of criticism against Edwards.

But Republicans’ point here is a charge of inconsistency or flip-flopping. They can’t really be attacking the idea of putting Social Security money into the stock market, after all, since it’s central to their policy.

But there’s a basic point here that Drudge (or rather his liaison at the RNC or the White House or whomever) is intentionally obscuring. The debate over Social Security is about whether risk is pooled or whether it’s individualized. Are there guarantees? Or do you invest your money and take your chances on your own? As one friend of mine said a while back, if it’s not Social, it’s not Security.

What Edwards was supporting in 1998 was taking a small portion of aggregate funds and investing them in the market, not creating individual accounts. And for those who are big Social Security policy wonks that makes all the difference in the world.

In any case, this is a detailed policy argument, over which people of course disagree. But the relevant point for the moment is that what the GOP operatives are trying to point to as a flip-flop here is really a matter of comparing apples and oranges. Not that that’s stopped them before, of course, but …

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