Bush: Deception through monotony

Matthew Yglesias makes a prescient point about the President's endless Social Security roadshow:

There does, however, seem to be a method in the madness. When George W. Bush first started talking about Social Security, virtually everything he said was false, and virtually nothing he said was challenged by reporters. Then Democrats, bloggers, etc. started a big hew and cry and all of a sudden it was getting challenged. Then everyone got bored with the whole thing. But Bush just kept on plodding. Now he's still saying all the same stuff that was discredited months ago, but isn't getting challenged on it as much -- either from liberals or from the press. So even though just about everyone in the world except me seems bored by this issue already, I still think it's crucially important not to lose focus.

This is the same approach he used during both presidential campaigns and the pushes for his tax cuts and the Iraq war resolution. See All the President's Spin for the gory details; also see this post for a depressing analysis I did in October 2004 of how Bush and Cheney's repetition of misleading claims outpaced the media's willingness to report the deceptions and correct the record.

In short, the reason Bush does this is that it works. Consider the way he's erasing the "clawback" from the Social Security debate. The Los Angeles Times is unusual in noting that the "nest egg" statistics Bush is touting are, to put it mildly, a load of s---. Here's what he said Thursday in Kentucky:

If you're a 20-year-old making $8 an hour over your career -- 20 years old today, $8 an hour over your career, and if the government lets you put a third of your payroll taxes in a voluntary personal savings account, you'll end up with a nest egg of $100,000 when you're 63. If you're a police officer and a nurse, who started working in 2011 and you work your entire careers, when you retire both of you will have a combined nest egg of $669,000 as part of your retirement package. That's how money grows.

But the fine print is missing: even if private accounts invested in stocks grow according to the White House's optimistic projections, the government will take back 3 percent per year on every dollar invested, meaning that the traditional benefit accompanying that "nest egg" will be much lower.

Similarly, during a speech that night in Missouri, Bush touted another misleading statistic, saying that "with a conservative mix of bonds and stocks, you can get at least 4.5 percent. You compound that difference over time, somebody is going to have a pretty sizable nest egg they can call their own." Again, the real return on private accounts is the return on investment minus 3 percent per year, so even if private accounts earn 4.5 percent annually, the real return to the beneficiary would only be 1.5 percent.

The problem, of course, is that Bush's misleading claims are "old news" to the national media, so he can dump this nonsense on less sophisticated local press with near-impunity.

PS The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also has a piece up criticizing the 4.5 percent claim on somewhat different grounds here.

Comments

[rone]

He's catapulting the propaganda! Sheesh!