Things are definitely not going well for the President's new class project
when his very own Speaker of the House is openly unenthusiastic about the plan.
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, warning that "you can't jam change down the American people's throat," has become the latest and most prominent Congressional Republican to call for more public education and debate before Congress acts on transforming Social Security, President Bush's top legislative priority.
In an interview with The Chicago Tribune published on Friday, Mr. Hastert said he could not predict how long it would take to pass a major Social Security overhaul - perhaps six months, perhaps two years, he said. The White House has been pressing for fast action this year, hoping to take advantage of the president's political strength before any second-term inertia kicks in.
But Mr. Hastert said he had told the White House that "before we try to fix something," Americans "have to realize there's a problem with the system and what was good for the 1930's isn't going to work for the 2030's."
This is a definite indication that Hastert is getting tired of this issue. Two years? Maybe he doesn't have a very clear idea of how things have historically worked for second term presidents, because everything I've heard suggests that big presidential initiatives are less likely to pass the further you progress through the second term.
Freshly minted RNC Chair Ken "The Straight Man" Mehlman seems about as in touch with reality as ever.
Even as Mr. Hastert highlighted the political fragility of the issue, the chairman of the Republican National Committee was trying to demonstrate political momentum, declaring that in recent weeks Mr. Bush had successfully "made the case for reform." In a conference call with reporters, the Republican chairman, Ken Mehlman, said recent polls showed that Americans had rejected what he called the "ostrich position": that Social Security did not need to be changed.
Mr. Mehlman said he had not read the interview given by Mr. Hastert, but added that he would "respectfully disagree" with the notion that the public remained unconvinced of a need for fundamental change.
The Times wisely sought out the counsel of Andrew Kohut to verify Mehlman's claims.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan polling group, said recent polls did show public concern about Social Security, "but they only show conceptual support for the notion of personal accounts, and the reaction to details is all-important."
"I still don't think the debate on private accounts has been engaged enough among young voters, swing voters or anybody else - save true believers - to assume that anybody is in the bag," Mr. Kohut added.
The Republican exchanges came at the end of a week in which Mr. Bush continued to campaign across the country for his Social Security proposal, trying to allay the concerns of voters and elected officials in his own party. Democrats say Republicans are exceedingly vulnerable on the plan to create private accounts, in part because it is expected to be financed by adding more debt to an already substantial deficit. Administration officials have resisted fleshing out the plan's details.
Both sides are closely watching public opinion as the president makes his case. In the interview, Mr. Hastert said, "Now I have said to the president, I've said it to all of his advisers, and I've said to all of our folks, 'Look it, you can't jam change down the American people's throat unless they perceive there really is a problem, that there's something there that isn't going to work 12 or 14 years from now and it's going to be a catastrophe when we reach that point.' "
Its hard to argue that sort of thing when it isn't true, though.