Bush's cigarette holder

Brad DeLong opens his statement to the Democratic Policy Committee thusly:

Any discussion of Social Security reform needs to begin with one too-rarely-asked question: Why is the American political system focusing its attention on Social Security? Is this really the aspect of American fiscal policy that should be absorbing our attention right now?

The answer is that we shouldn't. We shouldn't be focusing on Social Security right now. America has three problems with the fiscal policy pursued by the Bush administration:

* The current 5% of GDP on-budget deficit, the likelihood of major legislative changes (like extensions of expiring tax cuts) that will blow further holes in the budget, and the risks of economic crisis and recession and slowed long-run growth created by this Bush-league fiscal policy.

* The generational explosion of federal health-care costs we expect to see. From one perspective, this is not so much a problem but an opportunity: we expect our doctors, nurses, and druggists to do even more wonderful things for us in a generation. We would like for all Americans--not just those with thick wallets--to benefit from the advances in health care that we confidently anticipate. But this will be expensive: we need to figure out how much publicly-funded health care for the poor, the disabled, and the old we as a society wish to buy, and what taxes are going to fund these public health-care programs.

* The likelihood--not the certainty--that the Social Security system as currently structured will be in deficit by mid-century.

The first of these--the current Bush deficits--is the most urgent. The second of these--the health care funding "opportunity"--is the largest. The third of these--Social Security--is both the least urgent and the smallest. So why are we spending our time on it? There's no good reason. As Berkshire-Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett, no bleeding-heart liberal he, said last week:

...a [Social Security] deficit of $100 billion a year, something, 20 years out, seems to terrify the administration. But the $400 plus billion dollars deficit currently does nothing but draw yawns....

DeLong wonders why Bush & Co. would be obsessed -- and obsession really is the only word to describe Bush's every waking moment on the Neverending Bamboozlepalooza tour that's been on the road since the State of the Union -- with a problem that, at its worst, will be a less than .5% of GDP "crisis" 20 years from now. He suggests its in part the "broken jelly jar on the kitchen floor" logic. "What broken jelly jar?" asks the preznit, when asked about the $600 trillion budget hole he and his GOP cronies have blown, or the looming healthcare crisis that we face in less than a decade. In other words, Bush/Rove don't want to draw attention to the budget deficit because they created it, and they don't want to deal with healthcare because the answers to that are a.) it's too hard to tackle and makes George's brain hurt, and b.) any sensible solution starts to look a lot like "Hillarycare™".

No doubt, and you should read the whole dang thing. But I think there's more to it than that. Although the Vega itself has suggested a Machiavellian motive to Dear Leader's S.S. "reform" -- turning it into an anti-poverty program that will quickly lose favor with middle class taxpayers/voters -- I don't think that's G.W. Bush's motive (though I do think it is the motive of people like Grover Norquist and Karl Rove).

No, [and you should now read this with a Viennese accent, ok] I think Social Security represents two sides of GW Bush that have emerged: His need to outdo his father -- dare I say, kill him -- and his sense of the messianic.

Just as I believe Bush imagines that he will be spending his post-presidency riding up and down "Freedom St." and "G.W. Bush Ave." in downtown Baghdad, passing statues of himself where Saddam once stood, Bush sees overhauling Social Security as his chance to create a legacy for himself on the domestic front, something that building a budget deficit where a surplus once proudly stood doesn't really do, and something signing a federal no-gay-marriage act falls a bit short of.

Bush says he doesn't care what history will say of him, 'cause "we'll be dead," but no president since Reagan has been more focused on his own self-image. From the quasi-military uniforms to the careful positioning of the podium so that his head appears in the papers the next day as yet another figure on Mt. Rushmore, Bush is very much focused on how he is perceived now and in the future.

So just as Bush has gone out of his way to take on Poppie mano a mano every chance he gets, there is really only one American president who towers over the modern history of America like a political father figure: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt's two greatest accomplishments were leading America in defeating the Axis (the real "Axis of Evil" kids) Powers and putting an end to the grinding poverty that so many Americans could expect when they were too old to work.

Bush has certainly not been shy in undermining FDR's role in the former. Sure, Bush orates, he helped make sure there was plenty o' freedom in Europe by stompin' Hitler, but the ol' geezer then gave the farm away to the Russians at Yalta.

And then there's Social Security. Killing it pretty much ends the last New Deal program and consigns FDR to the history books.

Or maybe, sometimes, a cigarette holder is just a cigarette holder.