If John McCain has many more days like Tuesday, his only chance to get to the White House will be as a tourist. On the same day he dropped jaws with his joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes, McCain amazingly slammed Social Security as "an absolute disgrace." Then even as McCain's first-term balanced budget pledge was being pilloried in the press, Americans learned that 300 economists signed a statement supporting McCain which made no mention of it. And topping it all off, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's insistence on a timeline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq put John McCain squarely on the defensive on his signature issue.

Coming on the heels of his April 2007 jest about "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," McCain's jest about killing Iranians with cigarettes of mass destruction served to once again raise eyebrows - and questions about his presidential temperament.

But that was hardly his most damaging gaffe of the day. While walking the fine line between extolling private retirement accounts without explicitly calling for the privatization of Social Security, John McCain stumbled directly onto the third rail of American politics. As Mother Jones reported Tuesday, John McCain during a Denver town hall meeting the day before attacked Social Security, the program responsible for dramatically reducing poverty among the elderly, for working exactly as designed:

"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."

Appearing on CNN Tuesday morning, McCain only compounded his error. Sounding like a rabid laissez-faire ideologue, an ignorant hack or more likely both, McCain told John Roberts:

"They pay their taxes and right now their taxes are going to pay the retirement of present-day retirees. That's why it's broken, that's why we can fix it."

As an amazed Jared Bernstein of the Economics Policy Institute put it, "It's like he's saying, 'I just found out that taxes come from people...that's a disgrace.'" MoJo's Nick Baumann summed it up nicely, "McCain is saying, again, that the problem with Social Security is that Social Security is Social Security." And given McCain's past support for Social Security privatization and his promise Monday to magically reign in entitlement spending in his comical effort to balance the budget by 2013, McCain no doubt just scared the bejesus out of America's senior citizens.

But McCain's woes on Tuesday hardly ended with his Social Security calamity. Just one day after his campaign proudly proclaimed 300 economists had endorsed his economic plan, the Politico revealed McCain's gambit to be a smoke-screen. The economists' statement, as it turned out, excluded the centerpieces of his "Jobs for America" document released Monday - a gas tax holiday and balancing the budget by the end of a first McCain term - precisely because so few believe in them:

Upon closer inspection, it seems a good many of those economists don't actually support the whole of McCain's economic agenda. And at least one doesn't even support McCain for president.

In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain's economic plan, many were unfamiliar with - or downright opposed to - key details...

...The statement they signed is 403 words long - and there is no mention of the gas tax holiday or the deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office projects will approach $400 billion this year.

As for that balanced budget pledge, it's no wonder, as the Politico's Mike Allen reported, that McCain wants "no videotape of it to show later."

Still, McCain's disasters on the home front pale in comparison to the Iraq trap which ensnared him yesterday. Seeking to gain leverage in the talks over a new status of forces agreement with the United States, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mouwafak al-Rubaie echoed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's insistence that a timetable for withdrawal of American troops is a requirement:

"Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong...We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn't have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq."

Sadly for John McCain and his vision of 100 year U.S. military presence in Iraq, McCain in 2004 acknowledged that American forces would have to go if a sovereign government in Baghdad demanded it:

"Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because - if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

After lambasting Mitt Romney and Barack Obama alike over withdrawal timelines, John McCain is now scrambling to address statements like those from Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh that the timeframe for a U.S. pull-out "can be 2011 or 2012." Exacerbating matters for McCain, the timeline quandary comes just days after Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen insisted that he can't shift badly needed troops to Afghanistan "until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq." To the consternation of the McCain campaign, the messages from Baghdad and the Pentagon sound like they were written by Barack Obama.

To be sure, Tuesday was a terrible day for John McCain. And judging by his new restrictions on campaign press, it sounds like Mr. Straight Talk just wants it all to go away.

UPDATE: As reader James notes in the Comments, McCain's Tuesday was even more self-destructive than I first reported. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, McCain took credit for orchestrating the release of American hostages from FARC rebels during his stop-over in Colombia:

Trib: What was the purpose of your recent trip to Colombia and did you accomplish what you hoped to accomplish?

McCain: Well, I'm happy to tell you that I orchestrated the rescue of those hostages.

As it turned out, McCain was joking. But in a statement almost as comic, McCain claimed that Iraqi government figures were in fact not calling for a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal from their country:

Trib: Senator, with Iraqi leaders now calling for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals ...

McCain: Actually the Iraqis are not. The Iraqis widely reported as short a time ago as a couple of weeks ago that there would be no status of forces agreement, and Maliki would say that, and it got headlines, and of course it turned out not to be true.

In Cleveland on Tuesday, President Bush offered Americans yet another example of the heartwarming leadership style that has so endeared him to 26% of Americans. At his latest invitation-only event, Bush made a 13-year old girl cry. Of course, making fun of children is all in day's work for George W. Bush. After all, as his past teasing of the blind, the disabled, U.S. soldiers and blacks confirms, President Bush laughs at the expense of most Americans.

ThinkProgress tells the tale of Bush's failed outreach to the youth voter:

Jessica Hackerd, a "13-year old blonde-headed girl," asked Bush what his "next step with the immigration bill" will be. "Mr. Bush's sarcastic reply - a wry 'yeah, thanks' - drew laughter from the crowd of 400. But the attention caused young Jessica...to immediately tear up. 'No, it's a great question. No, I appreciate that,' Mr. Bush said, as he saw Jessica's reaction.'

That, as they say, was just Bush being Bush. In May 2006, President Bush made a bizarre remark which charmed disability advocates everywhere. Pitching his troubled Medicare prescription plan in Florida, President Bush said to a man in a wheelchair, "You look mighty comfortable." Six weeks later, Bush chided Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten, who is afflicted with Stargardt's disease and legally blind, for wearing sunglasses during the President's press conference:

THE PRESIDENT: Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

WALLSTEN: I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.

WALLSTEN: All right, I'll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there's no sun.

WALLSTEN: I guess it depends on your perspective.

George W. Bush's schadenfreude streak allows him to pleasure in the plight of the guilty and innocent alike. In 1999, Governor Bush laughed off his looming execution of Karla Faye Tucker, mimicking with condemned death row inmate with his trademark smirk, "Please don't kill me!" And while pitching his Social Security privatization scheme in February 2005, President Bush told a 57 year-old woman who described working three jobs that her story was "uniquely American" and "fantastic."

It was during that same failed campaign to sell his plan to undo Social Security that President Bush displayed his great pleasure in perpetuating stereotypes of African-Americans. President Bush used his January 12, 2005 town hall meeting to sell his Social Security privatization plan to a hand-picked African-American audience:

"Another interesting idea...is a personal savings account...which can't be used to bet on the lottery, or a dice game, or the track.

"Secondly, the interesting -- there's a -- African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people."

As Perrspectives has detailed before, when it comes to George W. Bush's sense of humor, the joke is on us. In October 2000, then candidate Bush used the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York to make light of the nation's yawning income gap, laughing "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." In March 2006, Bush chided the press for its coverage of Dick Cheney, joking "Good Lord, you'd thought he shot somebody or something." The President tried to shrug off his Katrina disaster and the embarrassing Dubai ports deal at Lynne Cheney's expense, "Lynne, I think you're doing a heck of a job. Although I have to say you dropped the ball big time on that Dubai deal."

But it was Bush's presentation at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner showed truly his contempt for the truth and for the suffering of the American people. His tasteless White House slideshow made light of the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Coming one year and hundreds of American dead and wounded after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush the cut-up hoped to regale the audience with his White House hijinx. As David Corn of The Nation reported:

Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

As it turns out, of course, President Bush can dish it out but he can't take it. When Stephen Colbert hilariously lampooned the President during his 2006 White House Correspondents Association dinner, a stone-faced Bush could barely muster a handshake.

That's why in Cleveland, apparently, President Bush decided it was better to pick on someone his own size.

Faced with negative polls and a pessimistic American nation, President Bush's just completed 2006 State of the Union Address naturally focused on the theme of "the Hopeful Society." But like the stillborn "Ownership Society" vision before it, Bush's 2006 SOTU will be remembered not for its policy program, but for its partisan political purposes.

The top 10 highlights:

1. Demonize the Democrats
The President continued Karl Rove's 2006 electoral strategy to once again run on national security and brand the Democrats supposed "pre-9/11 mindset." There can be no mistaking the intent of his words in what will no doubt be one the most frequently quoted sections of the address:

Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

2. Bait the Base
While the President's speech may have been light on policy, it offered several large helpings of red meat to his conservative base. For starters, a smug Bush proudly introduced his new Supreme Court justices, including the newly minted Samuel Alito. Proclaiming "human life is a gift from our creator, and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale," President Bush replayed his "culture of life" mantra of no abortion, no cloning and no embryonic stem cell research. "A hopeful society," Bush intoned, "has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners and that recognize the matchless value of every life."

3. Cognitive Dissonance and the Bush Doctrine
As Perrspectives has argued before, in the wake of the quagmire in Iraq the supposed "Bush Doctrine" has come to embody three principles in the war against Al Qaeda: no safe havens, preemption and democracy promotion:

We seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it...Dictatorships shelter terrorists, and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror.

Sadly, no one seems to have told Hamas, which only days ago swept to victory in the Palestinian elections. Even worse, no one seems to have informed the President, who offered the reworked, post-facto justification for the invasion of Iraq. While Bush supporters such as Charles Krauthammer "support undemocratic measures undertaken to avert a far more anti-democratic outcome" as a means of addressing the "one man, one vote, one time" conundrum in the Middle East, the President himself seemed happily unaware.

4. Delicious Irony, Tehran Edition
Turning to Iran, President Bush described "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite." In the United States, that "small clerical elite" is also known as his base.

5. Bitch Slapped on Social Security
The highlight of the evening for Democrats was Bush's implosion over Social Security. As a determined Bush began, "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," Democrats jumped to their feet and exploded in cheers, leaving an angry and embarrassed President Bush struggling to regain control, and his composure.

6. What Health Care Plan?
Leading up to the speech, analysts, commentators and pundits alike focused on health care reform as the centerpiece of Bush's domestic agenda, the Social Security privatization plan of 2006. Despite extensive coverage in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other media outlets, the Bush speech contained little new about new tax incentives for health savings accounts and other measures designed to move risk and costs from employers to employees, young to old, healthy to sick, and rich to poor.

Bush's reticence may be linked to reports showing that consumer-driven health care schemes such as HSAs don't lower costs, but limit access to health care. Or it could be the disastrous start to his Medicare prescription drug plan or the devastating cuts to Medicaid now working their way through Congress.

The President, however, was cheered by his Republican colleagues with his call for malpractice reform:

And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice -- leaving women in nearly 1,500 American counties without a single OB/GYN -- I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year.

On this point at least, Bush was consistent, echoing his words during campaign 2004:

Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.

7. Energy Crisis?
Facing an American public unhappy with rising energy prices, oil man George W. Bush played the role of visionary on the topic of American dependence on foreign energy sources. Without irony, Bush declared "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." The President also set a laudable goal "to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

Sadly, his proposals including the rehashed (hydrogen fuel cells), the expected (coal) and the bizarre ("wood chips and stalks or switch grass"). Higher fuel efficiency standards, of course, would have been a nice touch.

8. Pandering to African-Americans
Apparently, no Bush State of the Union address is complete without the requisite pandering to African-Americans. In his 2005 SOTU address, Bush sought to boost the GOP's dismal performance among black voters with initiatives on HIV/AIDS, DNA evidence and gangs. In 2006, Bush offered an encore:

More than a million Americans live with HIV, and half of all AIDS cases occur among African-Americans...We will also lead a nationwide effort, working closely with African-American churches and faith-based groups.

The President might instead want to start with GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman, who told the NAACP last year that hate crime murder victim James Byrd "was a racist killer in east Texas, who the president brought to justice." Another suggestion for the President? Truly honor Coretta Scott King by blocking the new poll tax pushed by Republicans in Georgia to suppress black voter participation.

9. Gang Banger Laura Bush?
Another staple of the Dubya State of the Union is the assignment of one or more ill-defined family-focused initiatives to his wife Laura. This year, Laura is the point person for the "Helping America's Youth Initiative," which encourages "caring adults to get involved in the life of a child." Last year, the First Lady's task was to broker a peace deal between the Bloods and the Cripps. That, apparently, is still on her to do list.

10. Katrina and the Waves
Facing growing acrimony over revelations of his administration's bungling - and subsequent cover-up - of its response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush reached out to the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency and stays at it until they're back on their feet...Yet, as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived. In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country.

For the Bush strategy behind this, see #8, "Pandering to African-Americans", above.

For the text of this and all previous Bush State of the Union addresses, visit the Perrspectives Document Library.

The Perrspectives Social Security Document Library has just been updated. It now includes the Republicans' cynical game plan, the Wehner memo, the Trustees' 2004 Report, the 2001 report of the Presidential Commission, CEPR's simple fact sheet, and resources from AARP, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Campaign for America's Future and ThereIsNoCrisis.com.

Recent articles on studies and articles on the pension and retirement system reforms in Argentina, Chile and the UK are also included. In addition, links to alternative proposals from The Century Foundation, The Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution have been added.

Visit the Social Security Document Library now!

From the perspective of public policy and narrative, President Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address brought few surprises. But for sheer chutzpah, President Bush reached new heights.

1. The Social Security Shell Game
As expected, Bush focused on Social Security privatization. Also as expected, he continued the selective use of numbers to create the phantasm of a "crisis." Needless to say, there was no mention of the $2 trillion cost and the serious risks of private accounts. Even more cynical, Bush in the guise of flexibility introduced politically unpopular trial balloons for Social Security, all of which he attributed to Democrats (Bill Clinton on raising the retirement age, John Breaux on ending early collection of benefits, Tim Penny on indexing benefits to inflation, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan on benefit calculations.)

2. Freedom's Just Another Word for...
As we wrote prior to the speech, President Bush tried to appropriate the very terms "liberty" and "freedom" for the GOP, in part by equating his crusade for freedom abroad with the greater "liberty" provided by his domestic program at home. His admonishments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, no doubt a bone tossed to critics of his Second Inaugural, were oddly out of step. And his tough talk towards Syria and Iran ("To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder") certainly will not calm friends or foes.

3. Keeping It Real with African-Americans
President Bush continued his shameless, transparent pandering to African-Americans, especially black churches. This is the same man who refused to meet with the NAACP during and ignored the Congressional Black Caucus his first term. Tonight, he promised to increase funding for African-American men and women afflicted with HIV-AIDS, use faith-based initiative funds to help churches fight gangs, and boost spending on DNA analysis for defense attorneys. As he did during his January 12 town hall meeting on Social Security, Bush wanted to keep it real for his homeboys.

4. Red Meat for Red States
Bush also offered his most vociferous supporters among the Spongebob crucifixion crowd the obligatory props. Despite recent news that the White House would back off the Federal Marriage Amendment, Bush reiterated his support for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The President also recycled his "culture of life" rhetoric during one of the more bizarre moments of the night; while he spoke out against embryonic stem cell research, the camera focused on the wife of Christopher Reeve.

5. Passion Play - Iraq as Theater
Without question, the image of an Iraqi voter embracing the mother of a Marine killed in Fallujah will dominate reaction to the President's speech. It was very emotional and quite moving, but also no substitute for an American strategy for success.

In a nutshell, the speech was what one would expect from Mr. Personality. But judging from the instant CNN web poll results, the 60% positive rating by viewers showed that, as usual, it seemed to work for him.

With President Bush and the GOP launching an all-out campaign for their misguided Social Security privatization plan, Perrspectives has assembled a library of resources to help you evaluate the pluses and (endless) minuses of the Bush proposal.

The Perrspectives Social Security Document Library includes the Republicans' cynical game plan, the Trustees' 2004 Report, the 2001 report of the Presidential Commission, CEPR's simple fact sheet, and resources from AARP, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Campaign for America's Future and ThereIsNoCrisis.com. Recent articles on studies and articles on the pension and retirement system reforms in Argentina, Chile and the UK are also included.

Visit the Document Library now!

Only days after the Armstrong Williams paid-for-pundit debacle, President Bush used his January 12 "town hall meeting" to once again reach out to African-Americans. this time on his Social Security privatization plan.

With a hand-picked audience of supporters present on stage and in the Washington DC audience, Bush was on the top of his game:

"Another interesting idea...is a personal savings account...which can't be used to bet on the lottery, or a dice game, or the track.

"Secondly, the interesting -- there's a -- African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people."

As with father Bush 41 before him, George W. Bush apparently cares about all American, even the "brown ones."

The impact of the Opt Out Society can be seen across the policies the Bush administration has pursued since coming to office. These are consistently defined by three characteristics. First is market idolatry; all public policy issues are framed in terms of market choice, competition, and privatization. From school vouchers to a market for pollution credits, any outcome that results is by definition the right one, since it was freely decided by the market. Second, the politics of the Opt Out Society involve the concomitant privatization or outright elimination of government services, whether defunding public schools, encouragement of non-governmental "faith-based organizations", or the assault on a national retirement system, Social Security. Last, and most destructive during the war against terror, is the glorification of private interest and an extreme individualism that divides Americans by class and geography, and diminishes their belief and faith in their own government and institutions.

Take a look, for example, at the Bush energy policy. Formulated in secret (an approach for which Bush ultimately paid no political cost, unlike the Clinton administration's sorry experience with health care in 1993/4), the Bush/Cheney program merely rewarded producers without reform. Early on in the spring of 2001, its staunch support for market deregulation at any cost led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject California's pleas for price caps, an investigation into key companies like Enron or Duke Power, or any other market intervention. That we now know that Enron did in fact rig prices and limit energy supplies during the California blackouts, as then claimed by Gray Davis, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, was due only to Enron's malfeasance against its shareholders becoming public. (Gray Davis' recall and replacement by Arnold Schwarzeneggar in October 2003 was a bitter irony, as it was largely the result of the failed deregulation policies of his Republican predecessor and a GOP legislature.) At no point before or after September 11 was energy independence viewed as a national priority or vital issue of national security. ANWR would be opened to drilling as one means of expanding domestic oil production. Bowing to its allies in the energy and automotive industries, the GOP would not countenance raising fuel efficiency standards even as a national security measure.

The Republican approach to health care too reflects its Opt Out philosophy. Heading into the election of 2000, the GOP was touting private Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) to address the issues of rising health care costs and 41 million uninsured Americans. By offering tax deductions or credits to individuals setting aside funds each year for their own health care, the GOP would create incentives for generally younger, wealthier and healthier Americans to withdraw from larger insurance pools, while minimizing their own expenditures on "unnecessary" health care. The social impact, of course, would be higher premiums for Medicare, Medicaid and employer-funded health programs, as individuals left in these plans would be older, sicker and more often requiring long-term care. The president's initial prescription drug plan for seniors proposed in the fall of 2002 showed the same approach; the new benefit would be provided only to those opting out of Medicare, and instead putting funds into the hands of private insurers. Congressional Republicans did bow to public pressure on this point, but they won the war by building privatization of Medicare into the final bill in late 2003. Once again, the Republican message: you are on your own. The government has no responsibility to you, and you certainly have no responsibility to your fellow citizens.

As would be expected of a Republican administration, the Bush program for economic growth is its most naked and cynical. Coming to office proclaiming "it's your money", the Bush tax reform program has poured money into the hands of the wealthiest Americans who need it least. With unemployment hovering at 6% and 2.5 million jobs having evaporated in his term, Bush' s attack on the estate ("death") tax, progressive rates, and capital gains and dividend rates promises to empty government coffers and guarantee a mountain of deficits for years to come. (Only the $300 income tax rebate, advocated in 2001 by Senator Lieberman and other Democrats, offered any resemblance to near-term economic stimulus.) With his $350 billion "compromise" tax cut of May 2003 and his demand in the 2004 State of the Union speech that they be made permanent, Bush seeks to continue the administration's unapologetic policy of upward income redistribution. The sheer cynicism of that policy is exceeded only by the President's laissez-faire hypocrisy when it comes to steel tariffs and agricultural subsidies. In any event, as with Reagan and Bush the elder before him, Bush will leave a legacy of deficits that jeopardize economic growth and a government starved of funds for addressing the major challenges facing the nation.

Education reform is perhaps the most dramatic example of the Bush administration's belief in undermining public institutions and rewarding citizens for withdrawing their support as well. School vouchers represent the ultimate application of the market metaphor to public policy, as parents-as-consumers purchase educational performance as a product for their children. That there are other non-market considerations in educating our children (creating a sense of community, introducing students to others of different races and classes, inculcating American and democratic values) is irrelevant to the GOP; test scores are the only product in the market for education. Despite the administration's setback in 2001, victories by voucher proponents in the Cleveland Supreme Court decision, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. mean the threat of "School Choice" to public education is only just beginning. In essence, Republicans are saying to Americans, "this is not about our children; only be concerned with education of your own child. You have no obligation or responsibility to anyone's family but your own." That this encouragement to Americans to withdraw their support from common, public schools dovetails nicely with social conservatives' advocacy of parochial school education should come as no surprise. America's children are not just being left behind; they're being left in the dust.

The Opt Out philosophy also extends to the Republican program for retirement security. Social Security privatization has been a centerpiece of the president's program since his days as candidate. Despite the enormous success of the Social Security program in eradicating poverty among senior citizens, the Bush administration's clear message to Americans is that the only retirement issue of concern is your own. The Bush plan of 2000 allowing Americans to invest up to 16% of their current Social Security taxes is not only risky to investors (as the Dow dropped by a third and the Nasdaq by 75% in three years), but compromises the soundness of the program's financing by withdrawing $2 trillion from the Trust Fund over 10 years. That money for today and tomorrow's retirees has to come from somewhere; that's the price of "opting out." The administration would not consider any reform alternative other than the private market, such as means testing, progressive tax rates (perhaps as part of general revenue) for social security, or even a government-managed program of retirement investment options for participants. Yet again, the clear message, especially to younger workers, is "you are on your own, we are not in this together."

The Bush agenda extends its pervasive belief that Americans should not support common endeavors, and withdraw both their faith and their funds from their government to other aspects of public policy, both large and small. Environmental policy, media consolidation, and "faith-based" social services are clear examples. The "Clear Skies" program uses a regime of emissions "shares" to allow individual companies to skirt pollution limits previously in place under the Clean Air Act. The impact on Northeastern states from coal-burning power plants in the mid-west will be non-trivial. "Healthy Forests" and "Fair Use" rules extend the rights of logging companies, mining firms, farmers and herders to extract profits from public lands with limited restrictions, all for prices well below market rates. The attack on public goods is accompanied literally by an attack on the public good, the FCC's endorsement of corporate media consolidation being only the most recent. Further, the $8 billion federal office of "Faith-Based Initiatives" privatizes social service functions under the auspices of religious and sectarian groups that may discriminate against both potential employees and beneficiaries. (To not fund such groups, conservatives say, would be "discrimination against religion.") Never one for irony, President Bush might do well to consider that the Taliban was a faith-based organization.

At a time of war and threats to national security, the Opt Out Society championed by President Bush and the congressional GOP undermines national unity and the American social contract. Its vision of American society is a lonely and impoverished one. It tells Americans that they have few obligations to their government and even fewer to each other. The Republican notion of community is barren and empty, a modern version of Hobbes' war of each against all. The Opt Out Society encourages and rewards Americans for separating themselves from any one else not like themselves. From gated communities seeking tax exemptions and school tax breaks for the elderly to Internet communities of the like-minded and valet parking at public venues, it is 21st century secessionism, the nightmare of Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. Americans have no commitment to each other for education, health care, retirement or virtually anything else. At a time of external threats to the United States, the Republican program clearly says we are not in this together. That Americans believe we are in this together can be the key to victory for Democrats in 2004...

Continue reading the entire essay, "The Opt Out Society: The GOP Threat to National Unity and the American Social Contract"...

Even with his shaky State of the Union address and dipping approval ratings, President Bush unfortunately remains in a strong position for the 2004 election. Saddam is captured, GDP is surging, and his reelection war chest has a staggering $100 million in the bank. And while his Democratic foes battle each other in primary contests across the country, Bush used his prime-time address to the nation to unveil his future for America, one grandly titled the "Ownership Society."

The administration's Ownership Society vision, a theme that along with wartime leadership will highlight his reelection drive, seeks to address the president's vulnerability over the jobless recovery. It aims to create a new American homo economicus, armed for battle in the new economy. Faithful to the GOP's twin mantras of rugged individualism and free markets, the plan is to consolidate an array of federal programs with tax incentives for personal saving, retirement, job training, and health coverage, among others. Thus, the president will call on Americans to unite behind his dual crusades against terror abroad and joblessness at home.

Ironically, it is the public's growing realization that it is American national unity itself that is under attack by the GOP during a time of war that presents Democrats with their best chance for victory in 2004. In reality, the president and his party are creating an "Opt Out Society," a nation where Americans, while standing shoulder to shoulder against foreign foes, are divided and pitted against each other by an ideology of market worship, the privatization or abandonment of traditional government roles, and a radical individualism. Their Opt Out Society encourages Americans to withdraw their support from their country, their government, their communities, their schools and each other.

Continue reading "State of Disunion"...