FDR and GWB and possibly other letters

I don't watch commercials all that much, so I've missed a few here and there. In particular I've missed this political nugget in which President Frankly D. Roosevelt's courage in setting up Social Security is compared to President George W. Bush's courage in dismantling Social Security. Joe Conason, however, has some accurate commentary on the weakness of the argument.

The ad's not-so-subliminal suggestions are that George W. Bush equals Franklin D. Roosevelt, and that Mr. Bush seeks to honor Roosevelt.

While that reassuring ad was still running on the cable networks, a confidential White House memo got leaked to the press. Written by Peter Wehner, an aide to political boss Karl Rove, the memo outlined the President's strategy for pursuing changes in Social Security. After explaining why the White House must create a sense of crisis about the system's future, and arguing that there should be sharp cuts in benefits, Mr. Wehner touted the true ideological aim of this campaign.

"For the first time in six decades," he wrote, "the Social Security battle is one we can win -- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country." Of course, the last time Republicans "lost" the Social Security debate was in 1935, when they tried to block the program's creation. They lost again in 1964, when their Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, wanted to abolish the system and lost all but six states in an historic landslide. Mr. Wehner's remarks raise the suspicion that he means not to protect but to overturn Roosevelt's landmark achievement, which remains the most successful social program in American history.

There could hardly be any tactic more deceptive than appropriating Roosevelt to undo his legacy, but that ad man's lie represents the pervasive fraudulence of the White House sales effort.

The ad was created by a group called "Progress for America" who also reprints various articles calling for the Phase Out / Privitization schemes of the Bush White House. One of them, from the Wall Street Journal, contained this interesting passage. "Defenders of the 70-year-old status quo cry that the system isn't broke. It isn't, but only because of past increases in the payroll tax. The Bushies respond that another such fix will be necessary to keep it solvent in a few years, so why not go for a permanent solution?"

I suppose eliminating Social Security could be seen as a permanent solution to the Social Security Problem. Also I'm not sure who the author of the previous article is referring to when he mentions the Bushies, but obviously there are those on the right wing who would like to see him talking more openly about eliminating social security.