What is Senator Obama's position on social security? He goes to Florida and tells retirees there that had George Bush been successful in privatizing social security three years ago seniors would have lost a bundle in this latest bear market, an assertion which is patently untrue. For one thing, Bush's program would have not been open to anyone 55 or older, which would exclude current seniors, and would have been optional in any event.
Then the senator's website quietly removed from their social security statement Obama's previous assurance that it would be both unnecessary and unfair to raise the retirement age.
So what's going on here?
Ed Morrissey thinks that Obama's Florida statements were a way of preparing the ground for a new social security plan that would indeed raise the retirement age. In other words, the misrepresetation of Bush's plan is the run-up to another policy back flip.
Maybe, maybe not. Raising the retirement age may be the right thing to do, even if Obama has been saying all along it would be the wrong thing to do, but misrepresenting Bush's plan to retirees in order to discredit Bush and, by extension, McCain, is not.
RLC