The key passage in the Wehner Memo (the leaked memo written by Karl Rove’s deputy, Peter H. Wehner and reported this evening in various news outlets).
Let me tell you first what our plans are in terms of sequencing and political strategy. We will focus on Social Security immediately in this new year. Our strategy will probably include speeches early this month to establish an important premise: the current system is heading for an iceberg. The notion that younger workers will receive anything like the benefits they have been promised is fiction, unless significant reforms are undertaken. We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the pre-condition to authentic reform.
Remind you of anything?
Also included is a nice encapsulated history lesson: “For the first time in six decades, the Social Security <$Ad$> battle is one we can win — and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.”
In other words, this isn’t about the fiscal soundness of Social Security or the babyboomers moving toward retirement or anything else. As Wehner himself says, this is the best chance the opponents of Social Security have had in six decades of trying to phase-out the program.
And this allows us to see the whole matter clearly. Social Security has been around for seventy years. How many people do you know who really don’t like Social Security? Back when I was younger I’d go spend part of my summer at the subsidized retirement community where my grandparents lived. And I don’t remember many people who lived there bad-mouthing Social Security. And those folks had lived under the program for pretty much all of their adults lives.
Or, the more relevant question, how about people today? How many people think Social Security is a bad thing? A program that never should have existed? I’m not saying how many worry that the program may not be there when they retire. How many people don’t even like the whole concept?
I think they’re in a distinct minority.
So now you can see from memos emerging from the White House itself that this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. If it were, what would that sentence mean — (“For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win”)? The first time in six decades they can save it?
Clearly, this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. It is a battle to end Social Security and replace with something that Wehner clearly understands is very different, indeed the antithesis of Social Security.
This entire debate is about ideology — between people who believe in the benefits Social Security has brought America in the last three-quarters of a century and those who think it was a bad idea from the start. There is an honest debate to have on this point, a values debate. Only, the White House understands that the belief that Social Security was always a bad program isn’t widely shared by Americans. So they have to wrap their effort in a package of lies, harnessing Americans’ desire to save Social Security in their own effort to destroy it.
