private accounts
The Personal is Political
Not many people are actually
in a position to
evaluate the administration's Social Security plan in all its gnarly
details, so a lot is hanging on the way it's branded. The White House
has been insisting that the media should use the phrase "personal
accounts' to describe the proposal to allow people to divert a portion
of their payroll taxes into the stock market, rather than talking about
"private accounts" or "privatization." President Bush says that
"privatization is a "trick word" simply intended to scare people, and
the National Republican Congressional Committee called it a "false and
misleading" term.
The Republican National Committee distributed to the press a definition of ''privatize'' that explained why the word should not apply to the proposal. And the Republican pollster Frank Luntz charged that the media were making "a pejorative statement" when they continued to use the phrase after the administration declared it no longer operative.
