The Peter Principles: Thinking Like A Majority -- Opinion Central -- GOPUSA

The Peter Principles: Thinking Like A Majority
By Peter Roff
March 2, 2005

(UPI)-- The president and his top political advisers are justifiably proud of the campaign they ran in 2004, when George W. Bush told his top aides he wanted to avoid the mistake of winning a lonely victory.

The changes in U.S. public policy on the order of magnitude Bush had in mind meant he had to have more Republicans on Capitol Hill. Thanks to a campaign brilliantly conceived by Karl Rove and skillfully executed by campaign manager Ken Mehlman, he got his wish.

The GOP is now firmly in charge at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and Bush is thinking like the leader of a governing majority. But some of his allies on Capitol Hill are still thinking like a minority.

For the minority, opportunities must be seized rather than made. The minority gets one bite at the apple. A missed opportunity is a lost opportunity.

The majority controls the agenda and has the power to set the terms of almost any debate. It can settle for half a loaf anytime it chooses and can determine when to go back for more.

This strategic reality was lost on the Clinton White House during the healthcare debate. A group of Republican senators was willing to compromise with the White House on legislation. Had the Clinton's agreed at any time, the battle would have been over. Instead, the administration held out, my way or the highway style, refused to negotiate in good faith with Republicans willing to do a deal and, as a result, lost the whole shooting match.

As a practical matter, the Social Security reform debate is not precisely analogous, but there are similarities. The White House, for example, has yet to put much on the table beyond the four principles Bush articulated over the course of the 2004 campaign.

Its failure to do so has left the field clear for reform opponents to define Bush's proposal for him. This is not an insoluble problem; but it is an expensive one. When the White House eventually moves forward, it will have to expend political capital to redefine the debate in terms favorable to reform that could be better spent elsewhere.

The White House's apparent obsession with the cost has played into its opponents' hands as well. Rather than talking up the chance to give every future and many current American workers a safe and secure retirement beyond what Social Security can give them, Republicans are talking about why the program is not too expensive and how the very idea of personal retirement accounts won't wreck the whole system.

The president's decision to eschew a public discussion of what he might or might not propose has helped him avoid being pinned down. But this strategy also has its counterproductive side.

Bush's base, those who argue for generous personal accounts near the 6-percent level set by the Ryan-Sununu bill, see the whole proposal as dangerously close to going off the rails.

It is certainly possible the president has the idea in mind that 4-percent accounts represent a floor rather than a ceiling. A creative explanation would identify the ongoing debate as an effort to get the camel's nose under the tent.

Once a majority of Congress accepts in principle the idea of personal retirement accounts -- something all but one or two Senate Democrats seem constitutionally incapable of doing now -- it will be, in relative terms, easy to design them.

That is an example of thinking like a majority. On the other side is Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who, along with a few others, is engaged in pre-emptive negotiations with Senate Democrats that started with a concession that some major tax increase is the price of winning their support to overcome a filibuster.

This is minority thinking, driven by the sense that the GOP gets one and only one chance to fix the system.

This has led to what for the GOP is a foolish discussion about eliminating the cap on wages subject to the Social Security tax. The president, to the consternation of his allies, has refused to rule the idea out.

Yet there is a creative, majority-minded way to get around this problem as well. Simply removing the cap constitutes an increase in the payroll tax. One might even be able, through some creative juggling of the numbers, to show why it is an effective increase in the rate. In any event, Bush could say this approach violates his four principles.

What he could accept, and it's an idea the Republicans should pursue, is removing the cap in a way that is revenue neutral. And the only way to do that would be to reduce the overall rate on both the employer and employee portions of the tax. This would give those often referred to as the working poor -- the same people Democrats complain have been left out of Bush's previous tax cuts -- a major tax cut. They would not only be getting a shot at a secure and safe retirement -- they would get a tax cut too.

-----------

The Peter Principles explores issues in national and local politics, U.S. culture and the media. It is written by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.

--------------------

Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.