In his online column today, the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz analyzes why President Bush’s Social Security plan hasn’t steamrolled through Washington the way his tax cut proposals and his push for war in Iraq did.
Kurtz gives us eight reasons why Bush’s (so-far vague) proposal hasn’t made significant headway yet, ranging from the apparent lack of public desire for a plan, to the sound bite-unfriendliness of trying to explain any plan, to unified Democratic opposition.
But he misses the elephant in the living room — ample and repeated press coverage of Republicans who have growing doubts about the Bush scheme. Republicans haven’t uniformly lined up behind the president’s plan as they did for the major proposals of his first term. And that gives the press an excuse to write about what it loves best — conflict. Who wants to write about (or read about) a warmed-over stump speech in some freezing Midwestern town when some Republican is shooting his mouth off about the idiocy of the president’s top domestic priority?
On Wednesday, for example, the Post ran a piece which opened, “The Senate’s top Republican said yesterday that President Bush’s bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard.” That same day, the New York Times ran an article titled “For President’s Social Security Plan, Many Hurdles” which told us that “After a week at home listening to constituents on the issue, Congressional leaders of Mr. Bush’s own party have returned to Washington and immediately begun playing for time, suggesting that they may not meet his goal of passing legislation this year.” TV news has been equally ruthless about playing up intra-party strife; in a February 27 broadcast, for example, “NBC Nightly News” reported that “In Washington, the president’s proposal to revamp Social Security is facing new hurdles. With some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressing opposition, it appears Republican leaders may be willing to compromise.”
In his first term, President Bush had the luxury of a Republican party that rarely criticized his proposals in public, and a Democratic opposition that was far less disciplined than it is now. On the issue of Social Security, however, the president’s party isn’t unified, and the opposition, for the most part, is (thus there haven’t been too many “Rogue Democrat endorses Bush plan” stories to write). Coupled with the press’ Pavlovian response to the slightest whiff of conflict, it adds up to an avalanche of skeptical coverage for the president and his plan.
We and others have commented before on the press’ reluctance to acknowledge that it, too, is a player in these Washington tug-of-wars, not just an observer on the sidelines. And while press coverage of the extent of the opposition to Bush’s idea may not be the biggest reason that the president’s plan has struggled to get off the ground, it’s certainly worth thinking about the media’s role in all of this. After all, that’s what we — and Kurtz — get paid for.
