[Mb-civic] Lift a Pint for Coalitions

[Michael Butler]

December 4, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST 

Lift a Pint for Coalitions
 By DAVID BROOKS 
 

  spent much of last week talking with Republicans about Social Security
reform, but I didn't expect to find myself salivating over the phone. I was
in a hotel room in St. Paul when I connected with Senator Lindsey Graham. As
he spoke, I could hear Irish music in the background. I could hear laughter
and conviviality. It turned out that he was calling me from a pub in Dublin.

 I can't tell you how much I wanted at that moment to be in an Irish pub and
possibly not even talking about entitlement reform. But Graham was going on
passionately about his bill.

 Graham has campaigned in his home state, South Carolina, on the need to
reform Social Security and move to private accounts. "I've had every
demagogic ad you can think of run against me," he said as Guinness fantasies
danced in my head.

 Graham added that he would love to embrace the sort of bill that his New
Hampshire colleague John Sununu is proposing, which would create private
accounts and wouldn't reduce benefits or raise taxes to pay the transition
costs. But like most smart Republicans I spoke with this week, Graham
realizes that you can't pass a major entitlement reform without significant
Democratic support.

 "If John can get Democratic support, count me in," he was saying, as a
great roar of laughter arose from the pub behind him. But he knows that most
Republicans will never agree to a bill that balloons the deficit and
transforms a beloved program if it doesn't have bipartisan backing to give
them political cover.

 So Graham's bill would raise payroll taxes on the affluent to cover
transition costs. This idea is going to be tough for many Republicans, he
said, but both parties have to cross some Rubicons. He's received some
encouragement from senior Republicans and some important, though so far
private, support from Democrats.

 This was the first time in my life I heard a person in a pub talking about
benefit index formulas, so it was an important milestone on my descent into
pathetic wonkery. But as Graham was enthusing, I couldn't help thinking
about how the Social Security reform debate might transform the culture in
Washington.

 Over the past few years, attention has focused on things, like tax cuts,
that can be pushed through with partisan majorities. But in the second term,
Bush's top initiatives will require bipartisan compromises while making
divisions within the parties more apparent.

 Whether they like it or not, Republicans and Democrats are going to have to
meet privately in rooms and negotiate with one another. They're going to
have to develop some level of trust so they can make unpopular suggestions
and know they won't read about it in the next day's papers. They are going
to have to compromise, reach a deal and then stick together in the face of
the special-interest onslaught.

 The Social Security issue changes the incentives. The rule is compromise or
fail. If the president is to avoid a debilitating defeat, the atmosphere has
to change.

 In the past when it came time to build these sorts of grand coalitions, we
would have seen centrist deal makers in the Howard Baker mold rise to take
the lead. But those centrist types are gone, and now it will be up to
realistic partisans like Graham, who, it should be recalled, was one of the
aggressive House managers during the Clinton impeachment.

 And indeed, over the past couple of weeks we've begun to see that even in
this polarized age, there are little green shoots of what you might call a
negotiating culture sprouting up. The White House has been much more
flexible in talking about the shared sacrifices that will be required to
make the system solvent. Democrats have so far been given little inducement
to take risks, but even so, several important Democrats know that their
party can't merely be the party of the status quo. They have to embrace some
kind of reform.

 Maybe the context for old-fashioned coalition building no longer exists.
There aren't as many cross-party friendships as before, nor as many master
deal makers. But somehow we're going to have to fix Social Security so the
baby boom generation doesn't imprison its children in a fortress of debt.
We're going to have to bring the entitlement system into the era of
longevity. And if this culture of negotiation is to be recreated, I'm
thinking of a pub - far away and in a happy, happy place - where it just
might start.

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