BROOKE GLADSTONE: On Wednesday, reporter Carl Cameron attended his first presidential press conference in his new role as Fox News Channel's White House correspondent. [TAPE PLAYS]
GEORGE W. BUSH: Carl, welcome to the beat. Is everybody thrilled Carl is here?
MAN: Yes.
GEORGE W. BUSH: Please express a little more enthusiasm for [him].
CARL CAMERON: A question on Social Security, if we may, sir… [TAPE ENDS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If his mere presence pleased the president, Mr. Cameron's first question at his first press conference probably pleased him more. [TAPE PLAYS]
CARL CAMERON: …those who opt into a potential private account, personal account, could in fact have a guaranteed benefit as well…? [TAPE ENDS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Notice the quick semantic substitution - the word "personal" for "private." The administration advocates a plan that, among other things, allows young people to divert a third or more of their payroll taxes into what it now calls "personal investment accounts." The president used to call that "privatization," but it seems that word has negative connotations, so he doesn't use it any more. Democrats, not surprisingly, assert that these are private investment accounts and that the administration is, in fact, attempting to privatize Social Security.
BOB GARFIELD: Michael Tanner is director of the Social Security Project at the libertarian Cato Institute. He's been involved in designing the proposed changes, both to the system and to the language. Mike, welcome to the show.
MICHAEL TANNER: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.
BOB GARFIELD: You've been working on this issue for many years now and were actually quite instrumental in launching Cato's program ten years ago that, in turn, became the blueprint or a substantial part of the blueprint for the Bush plan. What was that project called?
MICHAEL TANNER: Well, when we began the project, it was the Project on Social Security Privatization. A few years ago, we changed that title to the Project on Social Security Choice.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, so why?
MICHAEL TANNER: We did focus groups and talked to people. We found that people, by and large, didn't understand the term "privatization." Their first thoughts was it was like privatizing the bus lines. We were going to hire a private company to send out the checks. And then their second thought was that it meant abandoning any sort of safety net or government regulation or oversight of the program. Since neither of those were true, we thought it was better to try and come up with another term that we could use in describing the program.
BOB GARFIELD: Is the GOP as enthusiastically embracing "choice" as the libertarian Cato Institute is?
MICHAEL TANNER: I haven't seen Republicans in Congress calling this Social Security Choice. I've seen a lot of different terms tried - "modernization," "personalization." I haven't seen any single term that works very well.
BOB GARFIELD: In some ways, is the whole nomenclature surrounding this issue made more difficult by the very term "Social Security," which is quite clear, quite definitive. It is supposed to be a social contract promising retirement security for all Americans.
MICHAEL TANNER: Go back even more sort of Orwellian to the Federal Insurance Contribution Act, which is what your Social Security taxes are called. They're certainly not a contribution. They're a tax. And it's not really insurance in any sense of, of the word; in fact, the Supreme Court's ruled it's not insurance. It is simply a tax and a government spending program. So, from the very beginning, the whole Social Security debate has been caught up in the use of language for various purposes.
BOB GARFIELD: Let me change the subject briefly to political correctness. I think most everybody agrees - most everybody - that political correctness is a sort of tyranny of the left. You can no longer call a thing by its name for fear that some constituency somewhere might be offended. Now, let me read from a memo promulgated by the National Republican Congressional Committee. It said "It is very important that we not allow reporters to shill for Democrat demagoguery by inaccurately characterizing personal accounts and privatization as one and the same." My question is: isn't this exactly the same crime as is committed by the political correctness police to try to flog a political agenda through the use of language?
MICHAEL TANNER: Well, I think it reflects a similar obsession with language, rather than substance. What we should be talking about is the importance of Social Security reform and what individual accounts are all about, and I will agree that certain Republican members of Congress get much too obsessed about the language used. On the other hand, I, I think there's a point that privatization, having become a pejorative, carries certain connotations with it when the questions are asked, using it.
BOB GARFIELD: Isn't it just the proper use of language? The red flags that the word "privatization" raises in people's minds are precisely the red flags that opponents to the Project on Social Security Choice are themselves warning against, namely that the government security that you've always had since the days of the New Deal would dramatically diminish under the president's plan?
MICHAEL TANNER: Well, they're not talking about simply abolishing the program. They're talking about creating an investment component within the existing Social Security framework. I think that, because it, it raises red flags, it's something that opponents of individual accounts certainly are going to use, and you see opponents saying don't privatize Social Security fairly regularly.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you the same question that we asked the liberal linguist George Lakoff just a couple of weeks ago. When dealing with any moral issue, and most political issues one way or another turn on various notions of morality, is there such thing as neutral language that, let's say, a journalist can use, or is just word choice, in effect, choosing sides?
MICHAEL TANNER: I think it, it is certainly possible to use language that is simply pejorative or is simply inaccurate, and I think that you should strive to find neutral terms like "individual accounts," something of that nature. But I think a journalist who uses "privatization" is not necessarily crossing the bounds.
BOB GARFIELD: Hm.
MICHAEL TANNER: You know, people use privatization around me all the time. I don't care. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Some of my best friends say privatization.
MICHAEL TANNER: [LAUGHS] Yeah, that's it.
BOB GARFIELD: Mike, thanks very much.
MICHAEL TANNER: Any time.
BOB GARFIELD: Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, the secrets behind the journalists who tell secrets - revealed.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.
