Jon Rauch has, as always, a very perceptive piece on the president’s social security reform plans. Money quote:
The 2004 exit polls suggested, to many conservatives, that “moral values” won the election for Bush. It may seem odd, then, that his boldest post-election priority is not abortion or gay marriage or schools, but Social Security. The key to the paradox is that Social Security reform is not, at bottom, an economic issue with moral overtones. It is a moral issue with economic overtones.
It’s about transforming a culture of dependency into one of self-reliance. That’s partly why I support it. But this impending fiscal crisis stuff with regard to social security is not plausible. I wish they’d talk that way about Medicare. But they’ve made that real crisis far worse.
The Dish 