TAMPA — For decades now political consultants, especially those
of the Florida sub-species, have been able to charge big bucks to
advise Republican candidates not to say anything about Social
Security during campaigns. It’s the “third rail” of politics, they
breathlessly warn. Touch it and your political career goes up in
smoke.
On the other side, consultants have cashed in advising
Democrats to attack all Republican candidates on Social Security,
early and often — to charge that these heartless villains are
constantly conniving to snatch your widowed mother’s Social
Security check from her arthritic fingers, regardless of what these
candidates have really said or done on this issue. The Democrats’
court eunuchs in the main(left)-stream media have been happy enough
act as megaphones for this scam.
This strategy — duck and cover on one side, Big Lie on
the other — enjoyed some plausibility for the longest time.
Countless candidates over the years found that just mentioning the
words “Social Security” in Florida lost them more votes than
mentioning the word “education” gained them. After all, Florida has
the highest percentage of residents aged 65 or over — 17.4 percent
— of any state. (If you must know — West By-God Virginia is
second at 16 percent, Maine third at 15.9. Alaska has the fewest
wrinklies at 7.7 percent. I can use that word because I turn 69
next month.)
But then the ideas of Marx, Darwin, and Freud also had
some surface plausibility when they were first sprung on an
unsuspecting world. And we wasted most of a century taking them
seriously. But we’ve pretty much — save for in faculty lounges,
news rooms, and behind some pulpits — de-constructed these three
quacks. And it’s time to unplug the third rail too. A Florida
Senate candidate showed us how last year.
The candidate who wrote the new rules for political
discussion of Social Security is now U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of
Florida. He didn’t just touch the third rail. He grabbed it. And he
wasn’t electrocuted.
Rubio pole-axed political consultants and much of the
commentariat by saying flat out on national TV, in a debate with
his main Senate opponent on Fox News Sunday
early in 2010, that Social Security had to be changed or it
would go belly-up, more sooner than later, and the checks would
stop for all. Rubio made clear than any changes, most likely to
include raising the retirement age, would not affect current
recipients, or people about to be eligible for Social Security. The
changes would only affect folks at least 10 years away from
retirement, who have time to plan for the changes. He repeated this
message in his campaign throughout Florida.
Then a strange thing didn’t happen. Political consultants
may have taken to their fainting couches after watching what they
were certain was a political suicide on national TV. And political
writers shifted into high dudgeon mode. Rubio’s opponents used
every scare tactic the law allows. But to the surprise of orthodox
thinkers everywhere, Florida’s seniors did not go into low earth
orbit. The promised backlash didn’t happen. Rubio won his election
by 20 points.
“Marco really cracked the code on how to speak about this
issue and how to overcome it,” Rubio’s Communications Director Alex
Burgos told me. “He raised the issue time and time again in
national and Florida settings. He was attacked by his opponents on
this. Millions of dollars of ads were run against him distorting
his position. But Marco was honest about the challenges and
solutions facing Social Security and Medicare. The electorate has a
very good sense that these programs are going bankrupt and will
bankrupt the country if nothing is done to reform them for younger
people.”
The what-to-do hasn’t been established — though almost
certainly they will have to involve raising the retirement age at
some point and fine-tuning the way benefits are calculated. But a
retirement plan that in its early stages had more than forty
workers paying into it for every retiree being supported, and
thanks to changing demographics now has only three workers
supporting one retiree (and is looking down the barrel of a
retiring Baby Boom generation), cannot continue without being
changed.
Voters get this, even those without PhDs in arithmetic.
The numbers just no longer work. For many Social Security
recipients the worry has shifted from how much of a raise they will
receive in their benefits next year to will their children ever
receive anything at all.
Some of the scrutiny is shifting from candidates who point
out that the system needs reforming to politicians who defend
Social Security as it stands. If the status remains quo for Social
Security, today’s 40-somethings will outlive the system. More and
more Americans are figuring this out. The time is coming, perhaps
it’s already here, when those who accuse anyone talking about
reforming Social Security of trying to destroy it no longer get a
free pass.
Though Social Security can, and must, be honestly
discussed if the country is to avoid spending itself into oblivion,
Rick Perry has found it’s not useful to refer to the still popular
retirement plan as a Ponzi scheme. OK, the way the system operates
today it shares many Ponzi characteristics, i.e., not enough new
members (workers) to pay off the old members (retirees). But we
gain nothing by saying this. And nothing was gained from Perry and
Mitt Romney’s unedifying Monday night exchange on Social Security,
much of which didn’t rise above the level of, “Nyah, nyah, nyah,
your book is dumber than mine.”
Instead of arguing over which candidate’s book got it most
wrong on Social Security, better to spend time studying the Marco
Rubio play book on the subject. The facts and the arguments are on
the side of Social Security reformers. Candidates are advised to
stick with them. They still will be criticized, and their positions
distorted, as Rubio’s still are. But the tide is clearly turning on
this one.
And don’t worry about the poor political consultants.
They’ll have to replace the part of their gravy train that has been
fed by the Social Security third rail gambit. It won’t be easy. But
these are bright and resourceful people. If you don’t think so,
just ask them.
