You can sell a war with lies.......

....but not Social Security "reform".

In the Chicago Sun-Times today William O"Rourke explains why Bush's attempt to dismantle Social Security has fallen flat.

One unintended consequence of Bush's push for Social Security privatization is that he has taken away from Republican lawmakers a staple of their 2006 re-election stump speeches. No longer can they just extol the wonders of private accounts, the something-for-nothing idea they have been selling for so many congressional elections. Voters are better informed now--and often know more than many members of the House.

Rep. Chris Chocola (R-Ind.), a second-term congressman, recently held a number of get-togethers in his northern Indiana district, but often appeared woefully unprepared to answer hard questions and criticisms of the president's privatization plan. Up till now, Chocola, who used family wealth to buy a seat in Congress, has been a rubber stamp for all things Bush, payback for the president's campaign visits during Chocola's 2002 run for the House, which helped him squeak to victory.

At last week's talkathon in South Bend, Chocola looked dumbfounded when it was pointed out to him -- after he claimed there was no money in the Social Security trust fund waiting to be doled out, whereas regular pension funds had "real cash" behind them -- that there were no piles of cash waiting for pensioners, either -- or for stockholders, for that matter -- only "claims," pieces of paper, just like Social Security.

So, the people are smarter and those in congress who give blanket support for all things Bush are looking like the idiots they are. So why could they sell an ill advised war and they can't sell an ill advised Social Security plan? Simple, Social Security is much closer to home and people have a lot more information about it.

Americans can be sold the idea of acting because of lofty ideals: freedom, the end of tyranny and tyrants, fairness for all. Much of the public found it easy to move from weapons of mass destruction as a cause for war, to liberating the people of Iraq from the sadistic, despotic rule of Saddam Hussein. However, the same people are clearly balking when President Bush attempts to sell them the end of Social Security under the guise of buying into an "ownership society" where everyone can fund his or her own retirement with personal accounts.

Unlike foreign battlefields, the domestic front is too close to everyone, and what goes on can be seen for what it is: trading the world's most successful Social Security retirement and insurance system for an idea whose time definitely has not come.

When it comes to Social Security the education of America is working but the Bushites are not giving up so we must not let up.