Undoing the New Deal

The first resounding cannonade of George W. Bush's second-term campaign against Social Security was fired by a baby-faced aide to Karl Rove named Peter Wehner. On Jan. 3, 2005, as the New Year's Eve bunting was coming down around the nation's capital and the inauguration scaffolding was going up on the Capitol Mall, the 44-year-old Wehner drafted a bellicose memorandum to inform the administration's right-wing power base precisely where the privatization of Social Security fit in the White House's worldview.

By Michael A. Hiltzik

June 26, 2005