PROFILES IN "COURAGE" :

Social Security Issue Rattling Races for Congress (ROBIN TONER, June 4, 2002, NY Times)

No other issue is generating more scrambling in this year's Congressional elections than Social Security and what Democrats assert is the looming threat of privatization. Consider the House race in this slice of northern Indiana, where the Republican candidate, Chris Chocola, issued a solemn warning recently to the local Rotarians meeting at Honkers Restaurant.

The Democrats are plotting to "scare seniors," Mr. Chocola, a 40-year-old businessman, told the hushed breakfast crowd. He read from an intercepted e-mail message — circulated far and wide by top Republicans in Washington — that features one Democratic aide chortling to another that "bashing Republicans" on Social Security "is sooo fun." Mr. Chocola concluded, "This is everything bad about politics, part of the reason people are so cynical."

Around the country, Republicans are launching similar pre-emptive strikes, with remarkable intensity for this early in the campaign, against the attacks they know are coming. Democrats have reassumed, with gusto and more edge than they have shown in years, their favorite role in a midterm election: The Guardians of Social Security.

Unlike global warming or tariffs or Iraq, Social Security privatization is an issue that matters to our future as a nation and Republicans, specifically George W. Bush, should stake their careers on it. Precisely because it is considered to such a dangerous issue for the GOP they can make huge hay out of having the "courage" to address it at all. They can give all those sickeningly self-serving speeches that begin : "I know this may cost me the election, but..." Then they just launch into a spiel--which polls show that most Americans already agree with, even older ones--about how our generations can't leave future generations to labor under the burden of a system that's gone haywire... Though patently disingenuous in presentation,
this position has the great advantage of being true. It's not courageous, it's merely commonsensical to turn the power of the markets loose on a retirement system that is headed for bankruptcy unless we do something. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 4, 2002 1:14 PM