Congressional Democrats seem to have very short memories. But luckily for them the same isn’t always true for voters.

Eighteen months ago, President Bush launched out on what was intended to be the signature legislative accomplishment of his second term, the cornerstone of his “Ownership Society”: beginning the phase-out of Social Security and replacing it with 401(k)-style private accounts.

The fanfare was deafening. Democrats shook in their boots. And the president stood ready to bend history to his will.

Only it didn’t turn out as planned. After huffing and puffing and stringing the matter along for months, the president finally dropped the whole effort without even putting forward a plan.

It’s not difficult to argue that the president’s failure to phase out Social Security was the shattering defeat from which his presidency has never fully recovered. So much political capital was put on the table, and the defeat was so total, that neither Democrats nor Republicans ever feared crossing him as much as they had in the glory days of his first term.

But none of that happened before the president was able to put together a long list of Republican representatives and senators who either signed on to his grandiose plans or waffled and hedged in a way that made very clear they weren’t willing to stand up for Social Security when their president came gunning for it.

And yet, as we build toward the pivotal 2006 midterms, you’d think it never happened.

I watch politics pretty closely, and I never hear the Democrats talking about it. It’s like bygones are bygones. And that foggy memory gotten even stranger after that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), announced right out in public that if the Republicans retain the majority this year they plan to go back and try the whole thing again in 2007.

Conventional wisdom may say that Social Security privatization is dead in the water for years to come and that Republicans don’t want to touch it. But how much more of a hook do Democrats need than the chief Republican on Social Security policy coming forward and saying they want to try again next year?

If Democrats are serious about taking back the House and the Senate this year, they need to have memories, well, as long as elephants’. At least they need to remember as far back as last year to what put them so clearly on the side of voters across the country and started to crystallize voter doubts about President Bush.

Social Security works for Democrats on two distinct levels. The first is on a simple level of values.

At least three full generations of Americans have lived under a system in which Social Security is fully woven into the fabric of American life. With deceptive polls, supporters of privatization managed to fool themselves into believing that the public supported replacing Social Security with private accounts, but they don’t. The spring of 2005 showed that quite clearly.

But that’s not the only way the Social Security issue works for Democrats. What last year’s Social Security privatization drive showed was that the vast majority of congressional Republicans weren’t willing to stand up to President Bush when he was pushing a policy their constituents opposed. They cheered the president’s efforts, praised his vision and in most cases were willing to sign on to his effort. On this key issue they put their political connections above the people who put them in office.

Some of those Republican members of Congress even resorted to ridiculous tactics to avoid coming out with a clear position on the issue and a clear choice between their constituents and the head of their party — stunts that should make them mockeries this year on the campaign trail.

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), to pick but one example, actually resorted to trick language to keep the local press in the dark about whether she was supporting the president or not. That stunt in itself should be worth a few points for her challenger.

As former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt wrote earlier this week, political campaigns are a lot more like boxing than chess. Subtlety and complexity equal defeat, and victory means hitting hard, early and right through to the end.

Good politics and good policy don’t go together that often. But on Social Security they clearly do.

So why are Democrats suddenly so silent?

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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