Bush's best idea (maybe)

I am entranced by President Bush's "ownership society" notion. The phrase, spoken by the president only once during his Thursday night acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in New York, is part of a larger centrist, moderate theme the president has proposed to create a more fluid economy and a more productive worker that is empowered, not hindered, by the government which protects, not ignores, their needs.\nEverything is on the table for these potential reforms: streamlining and simplifying a complex and onerous tax code; establishing tax-free health savings accounts; pension plans and worker training; and my favorite idea yet, a partial privatization of Social Security which will allow young people to invest some of their taxes into a private, tax-free nest egg and actually see retirement money. It's the kind of bold, wide-sweeping domestic reform necessary to inspire in a rather uninspiring political terrain. It's particularly appealing to young people, who live in today's world, and not yesterday's, who need and want to play by modern economic rules, not the old rules established 70 years ago in a country drastically different than today. \nHowever, there are two problems with this. The first problem is that the federal government has technically exploded under the watch of President Bush. And the second problem is he promised great things in 2000 and failed to deliver.\nFirstly, spending is through the roof. A roaring deficit has emerged from renewed agricultural subsidies, an intentionally deceiving Medicare prescription drug entitlement program, congressional pork-barrel spending, two bull-headed tax cuts during a national emergency and the larger-than-large Department of Homeland Security. It all needs to be reined in.\nThe ownership society Bush has proposed rolls on the assumption that Americans can start saving and investing immediately. In reality, implementing Bush's idea will cost untold, but inevitably worthwhile, billions. \nIt will be more of a building process, and before most Americans can join in, they need to handle credit card bills, mortgages and car loans. The same goes for the government: before we can ever reform anything, we need the money to reform it.\nSecondly, the president has walked us down the dead-end road of promises before. If Bush's administration can be faulted seriously for anything by the president's critics and his loyalists, it's the gaping discrepancy between his speech writers and his policy makers. They write big things, and they struggle to act on them. \nAn incumbent president's convention speech is more difficult than his challenger's. It needs to be a speech fueled on results and the future. Bush's speech was full of future, but lacked the requisite details and results to make a convincing argument to win over fence-sitting voters.\nBush can pin-point his actions over the past four years, but cannot pin-point those actions' benefits. He is full of hope -- hope for the economy, hope for wars abroad, hope for individual Americans -- but cannot give any foundation for this hopefulness. Thursday night he was the same "compassionate conservative" who, four years ago, proposed many similar and unfulfilled promises.\nBig ideas are about taking chances and in-fighting and debating. Bush's ownership society plan would be an uphill battle to implement, perhaps something that couldn't even be done if given another term. \nAlong with the only other bold idea of this campaign -- Sen. John Kerry's energy plan, which calls on an overhaul of energy sources and an emphasis on energy independence -- the ownership society turns our eyes away from yesterday and toward tomorrow. \nIf President Bush is re-elected and can somehow push his ownership society plan through an impossible Congress, it could turn out to be the best fulfilled idea of his presidency.