Privatization Road Show

It looks like George W. Bush's dog and pony act isn't working. The latest polls from Gallup/USA Today, the Washington Post (pdf) and the Wall Street Journal (pdf) show that an overwhelming majority of Americans aren't buying his "crisis" spiel.

Consider his latest stop in New Hampshire, where he wasn't exactly a hot ticket:

White House aides collected empty chairs in an echoing Pease International Tradeport hangar before Bush took the stage since only about half of the 2,000 free tickets were taken.

Dedicated backers said they liked the president's pitch.

But others left shaking their heads at Bush's controversial gambit. "Yes, there are problems with Social Security down the road, but where's the immediate problem?'' asked Paul Guercio, a 58-year-old unenrolled research scientist from nearby Lyman, Maine.

That's what happens when alarmist rhetoric such as those promoted by the Cato Institute is pushed too hard; people's b.s. antennas shoot up.

The conservative think tank Cato Institute has been promoting the dismantling of Social Security for decades. Their 1983 position paper called "Advancing the Leninist Strategy" (pdf) discussed how the champions of privatization can conduct "guerilla warfare" on Social Security.

Now the strategy is backfiring and Mr. Bush is left twisting in the wind.

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