John Geer on the Web

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush urged Republicans and Democrats to stop criticizing each other over proposals to overhaul Social Security and instead offer solutions that will ensure the program's solvency. ``There's still partisan talk,'' Bush told a crowd in Memphis today. ``There's still people saying, `I'm not so sure I want to get involved,''' he said. ``Now is the time to put aside our political differences and focus on solving this problem for generations to come.'' Today's stops in Tennessee and Louisiana brought to 15 the number of states Bush has visited since promising in his Feb. 2 State of the Union speech to push for Social Security private accounts. Polls show a majority of Americans oppose Bush's plan to let workers under age 55 invest as much as a third of their Social Security tax in stocks and bonds in exchange for lower guaranteed benefits. ``President Bush is having a hard time selling his plan on Social Security because there is no elite consensus that the problem is as serious as he paints it,'' said John Geer, director of political science graduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. ``It's going to be a tough sell.'' ... more