All this talk about legislation and the Bennett proposal and all the other hoo-hah is silly. This thing — this Social Security reform thing — is dead, and the president wasted an enormous amount of time and spent a significant amount of political capital with negative results.

It went wrong at the get-go, I think. The president tried a clever gambit that didn’t work. He said Washington politicians needed to reform Social Security but then charged others to come up with proposals and bring them to the table. He didn’t want to put a plan forward to be mauled, attacked and left for dead. Once the Democrats figured out nobody was clamoring for this, they had the easiest out in the world. All they had to do was do nothing. Submit no plan. Bring nothing to the table to negotiate. The president succeeded with legislation in his first term by bringing an incredibly detailed proposal to the table and then refusing to bend until others did. This time there was no detailed proposal, no specific legislation, nothing for anybody to bend to. Just as his handling of the two tax cuts are object lessons in how to get your way as president, his handling of Social Security has proved to be an object lesson in how to fail. His effort to engage a difficult issue is praiseworthy, but not to be emulated in the future.