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September
4, 2002 11:05 a.m.
The
P Word
Republicans
run away from Social Security “privatization.”
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oth Republicans
and Democrats seem to have decided that when it comes to Social Security,
"privatization" is a dirty word. Earlier this summer, the House
Democratic campaign committee released a memo saying that Republicans
have favored "privatization" over the last few years, that they
were trying to obscure this history, and that they should not be allowed
to do so. In the last week of August, the House Republican campaign committee
seemed to confirm the Democrats' prediction by issuing its own memo disavowing
the term: "'Privatization' is a false and misleading word insofar
as it is being used by Democrats to describe Republican positions on Social
Security." Memo authors Steve Schmidt and Carl Forti, the communications
director and deputy communications director of the committee, would have
Republicans described as supporters of "personal accounts."
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The Republican memo
is a piece of brazen historical revisionism. It pretends that the word
"privatization" was invented by Democratic spinners and then
accepted by a gullible media. It makes no mention of the incontrovertible
fact that "privatization" was the term used by many Republican
(and other) advocates of personal accounts until it turned out that the
word didn't poll well.
But opportunistic
as it is, the memo is basically right. "Privatization" is a
misleading description of the policy the word is used to describe: letting
people invest some of their Social Security taxes for themselves.
That policy, as Schmidt
and Forti note, does not mean "that Social Security would no longer
remain a publicly administered system." Personal accounts, they write,
"are not unlike the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) retirement model currently
in place for federal employees. The federal TSP is not a 'privatized'
retirement plan, although it utilizes personal accounts. Neither Democrats
nor Republicans describe the TSP model as a privatization plan because
it is wholly under the domain of the federal government." Democrats,
they say, "are employing the word 'privatization' for the specific
purpose of eliciting negative reactions among seniors because it carries
connotations of dismantling the publicly run Social Security system."
I'm an advocate of
personal accounts. But I've avoided the phrase "Social Security privatization"
in my own writing over the last few years because it's misleading, for
the reasons Schmidt and Forti suggest. When people talk about "privatizing"
schools or prisons, they generally mean contracting out their administration
to private-sector companies. Personal accounts, which inject an element
of choice into a government program, are not similar to those policies.
(People generally don't use the word "privatization" when they're
talking about school vouchers.)
If the Republicans
had written a memo saying that a lot of people, including themselves,
had carelessly used the word "privatization" in the past but
that it should henceforth be avoided by all participants in the Social
Security debate (including those who report on that debate), there would
be nothing objectionable in their claim. As it is, impartial reporters
would be justified in subjecting the memo to derision — so long as
they then took its advice.
The memo purports
to be directed to "GOP Incumbents and Candidates," not the media.
As political guidance to Republican candidates, however, the memo is incomplete.
Republicans should be told to avoid the word "privatization."
But too many Republicans are running away not just from the word but from
the concept too. They need to be told that this is a mistake. Two years
of bear markets and a season of corporate scandals have barely dented
public support, as measured in polls, for letting people invest some of
their Social Security funds. It is true that in the last elections, the
voters most concerned about Social Security voted for the Democrats. But
that's always the case, just as it is always the case that Republicans
are accused of seeking to dismantle the program. By talking about personal
accounts, Republicans substantially reduced the Democratic advantage on
the issue. They can do so again this year — and, more important,
keep a good idea alive.
AND
ANOTHER THING
Liberal critics of the Republican memo seem not to have noticed a significant
concession buried within it: "In the past, reporters have not used
inaccurate or politically loaded descriptions in reporting because it
violates a critical component of the journalistic code of ethics —
reporters must distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. That is
precisely the reason that most newspapers use 'estate tax' as opposed
to 'death tax' . . ."
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