The Washington Post ran an article today recounting Vice President Cheney’s most recent “PR swing” trying to sell the administration’s plan to partially privatize Social Security.
The piece reads as a mostly unremarkable — and by that we mean uncritical — bit of reporting on a town hall meeting at California State University at Bakersfield, featuring Cheney and Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas. The trouble starts early, with a quote from Rep. Thomas trying to soothe the worries of the audience by telling them, “The one thing people should not be concerned about is that in creating personal accounts you are going to exercise any significant risk … It will be structured in a way that you can get the benefit without a serious risk of losing money.”
Oh really? While Thomas appears to speak with confidence about the structure the proposed “personal accounts” will take, it’s worth nothing that as of yet no concrete proposals have been floated either by the administration or Congress (or at least no proposals that Congress feels any need to begin acting on in any serious manner). Despite the fact that neither Thomas, nor anyone else in government, can say what the private accounts might look like, the Post allows Thomas’ statement to stand alone. While it’s a common rhetorical device to substitute hopes and possibilities for actual plans about the future, when it comes to selling possibilities as policy, it amounts to little more than willful distortion.
Truth be told, any pronouncement about plans for Social Security — or lack thereof — have been complicated by the fact that even those ostensibly on board with whatever proposal the president eventually comes up with don’t seem to be on the same page. As the story notes, “Thomas on Monday said Social Security is not in a ‘crisis situation,’ contradicting the president’s assessment.” Yet just a few paragraphs later, Cheney is quoted as saying Social Security is currently headed for a “financial train wreck.” Not exactly the tightly controlled message discipline this administration has been known for. The Post, meanwhile, doesn’t see fit to try to explain this gap in perception by two key players on the same team.
The Post story also seems to rest on the unstated assumption that only Democrats oppose the president’s thumbnail plan for private accounts, framing it as a battle of wills, with only Democrats being pressured to concede on the issue:
Although many Democrats agree that, historically speaking, stocks and bonds have been a wise investment for many Americans, they still oppose converting a system that guarantees a set benefit into one that relies, in part, on unpredictable market forces …
In Arizona, Bush teamed up with his onetime presidential rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), to put pressure on skeptical Democrats to drop their opposition and consider a bipartisan deal.
Yet, as Jacob Weisberg writes on Slate today, not all Republicans are on board with the president, and “[s]everal Republican senators whose votes would be needed for passage are resisting private accounts.” Weisberg is hardly the first to note evidence of Republican opposition to the president’s desired overhaul of Social Security, but the Post doesn’t seem to have received the memo. Illustrating the reality beyond the spin is the case of Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who, as the Albuquerque Tribune reports today, “has been noncommittal on Social Security reform proposals except to say she opposes government officials directing the investment of Social Security funds into the stock market.” The reason for the Trib‘s report? The president visited Wilson’s district this morning “because his support from Wilson is shaky.”
It must be noted that the Post does end the story with a little “Fact Check” of its own, saying of Cheney’s pitch that “What he did not mention was that if the market were to totally collapse, it could leave workers with a smaller benefit and no way to recoup their losses.”
Hey, you gotta walk before you can run.
–Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.