War of Language

I find it always amusing when the power that be, attempts to pull a transparent sheet over our eyes hoping that we will not see what is on the other side. Do people really fall for these things? Case on point:

"The main thing we noticed today was the president's language, and the language of the reporters questioning him. The way to fix Social Security, Bush said, was to let people divert money from their payroll taxes and invest it in what he called "personal accounts." Note the repetition of his words here: "Personal accounts are very important ... a personal account, obviously, under strict guidelines of investment, will yield a better rate of return ... and personal accounts will enable a worker to be able to pass on his or her earnings...."

And note what reporters asked him: "Q: Mr. President, at the beginning of your remarks today you referred to two criteria that you're looking for on a Social Security fix; namely, permanent solvency and personal accounts.... Q: Any transition to personal accounts is estimated to cost between $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10 years.... Q: Are you prepared today to say that those who opt into a potential private account -- a personal account could, in fact, have a guaranteed benefit, as well?"

It wasn't too long ago that proponents of plans to divert money from Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market were using words like "privatize" and "private accounts" to describe their ideas. This would seem to be the accurate terminology: Social Security is a government program funded by public tax dollars. Diverting that public money into the stock market would "privatize" the program; the money that people invest in the companies in the market would have to be held in "private accounts."

The problem for Republicans, though, is that the word "privatize" -- and, by association, the phrase "private account" -- polls badly. "Personal account" is much friendlier. Nobody wants to "privatize" Social Security, the logic goes, but who would object to "personalizing" it? Sometime last year, then, word came down from Republican HQ that "private account" was verboten; from now on, Republicans would use the phrase "personal account" to describe their plan, and they would compel the media to use that phrase as well. Language maven and conservative columnist William Safire admitted as much in his On Language magazine column on Jan. 2: "This past summer, at the Republican convention in New York," Safire wrote, "the former House majority leader Richard Armey took me aside at a fat-cat function and whispered, 'Personal is the word, not private.'''"

The Salon.com Article (by subscription)