The Real Picture

With all the campaigning the President is doing to try to convince America that Social Security is in trouble, he often points to other nations - with no specifics, mind - as models with which we should compare our own system.

The Wall Street Journal has done just that - examining Sweden, Bolivia, Singapore, Chile, and Britain to determine whether privatization has helped them or not. Guess what? As far as success stories go - they aren't looking too good.

It is such a bad idea, even the Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, Rep. James McCrery (R) of Louisiana says Bush's privatization plan will weaken Social Security much further than doing NOTHING now.

Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund, had a pretty straightforward message for the President as well - It's the deficit, stupid!

Mr. President, you are no FDR, but you are so far gone in your own megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur that you haven't the sense to see it.

Campaign all you want. Bring Jeff Gannon to all your press conferences and only call on him. Your secret is out - you really don't care who you crush on your way to the history books. But know this: Your legacy will be how you pandered to the rich at the expense of the poor, how you exploited a national tragedy to the detriment of all, and how you actively sought to subvert the Constitution and everything this country is founded upon.

Won't it be the surprise when, many years later, the world remembers the era of your reign in much the same way the McCarthy era is remembered now? With shame and more than a little fear that it could happen again. That it Should Not happen again.

As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, and (just a reminder) a Republican.