Dopiest article of the day

Writing in Slate today, Jacob Weisberg has a piece titled “Bush’s First Defeat” declaring Social Security reform dead. The subtitle is: “The president has lost on Social Security. How will he handle it?” After a long discussion about how the Democrats have aligned against personal savings accounts, Weisberg concludes that this rebuke will weaken Bush politically. But then here’s the conclusion to the article that successfully refutes everything said beforehand (oh, and please forgive a certain verb that indicates Weisberg is insensitive about certain recent news):

But if Bush is shrewd enough to euthanize carve-out accounts while shifting to make solvency his goal, he will leave his Democratic opponents in a quandary. A package of innocuous tax increases and benefit cuts could extend the life of the trust fund out to 75 years in a fairly painless way. Substantively, it would be hard for even the most partisan Democrats to oppose this kind of compromise, which serves their goal of protecting the future of Social Security. But politically, Democrats would be loath to help Bush turn his first major defeat into another political victory.

Defeat? This sounds to me like the setup for a major victory: Bush backs off on personal accounts but proposes a range of indexed benefit cuts and a minor increase in the cap on payroll taxes. By now, even if Americans haven’t embraced personal accounts, they understand the long-term funding problems facing Social Security. The Democrats have defined themselves solely by their opposition to President Bush; how would they react to a Republican plan to save Social Security? I smell another Howard Dean Scream.