What else is new?

Public doubts Bush Social Security plan, reads the headline on MSNBC.

Well, duh.

The question that remains is how much of his bank account of political capital still remains. I think his mandate may have been far overestimated. I mean, it's one thing to take little baby steps, but to use a 3% margin of victory to attempt sweeping changes to one of the most beloved and successful social programs in the nation's history, well...I think that'd take a lot more political capital than he got in the election.

Perhaps he could have made a run with it if he'd accumulated interest (to continue the metaphor) on his political capital by pushing through easily won conservative issues. The more the public sees him as correct, on any issue, the more they'll tend to see him as correct in the future. I don't think that the conservatives' plan for Social Security is the right one, but I also think that Karl Rove and the GOP strategists fudged up a bit by going after it so aggressively.

Fargus...