Bush's Hard Sell

[Amelia]

Bush's Hard Sell

He should be playing offense at the State of the Union. Instead, Bush faces fire from his troops on Social Security.

By Richard Wolffe, Tamara Lipper and Holly Bailey

Newsweek

Jan. 30, 2005

Just five days before delivering the first State of the Union of his new term, President Bush dispatched his senior aides to ask his party for some unusual advice about the landmark address: what should he say about Social Security? At a party retreat in the Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.—an exclusive resort that once served as the Capitol's secret nuclear bunker—Bush's advisers were still wrestling late last week with the language of the speech. The president wanted to flesh out his plans to overhaul Social Security, but how much should he say about specifics such as personal accounts or the cost of it all? For several days, GOP leaders had pressed the president to do a better job of selling his ideas to a skeptical public.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6885059/site/newsweek/

[Dr. Shane]

Selling his Social Security reforms are playing offensive. However they are not his ideas. The idea of privitizing a part of Social Security was proposed and passed in one of the houses of Congress about 50 years ago.

[Bravus]

I think it's worth noting (and we've done the debate on the merits of privatization, so I'm not going back there) that there are quite a lot of Republicans who also still need to be convinced by Bush's plan. I'm not sure whether that's only because they think it will be a tough sell to the electorate, or because they see problems with the approach itself, I just think it's interesting that this is an issue that doesn't line up clearly along party lines.