In all the talk about the President's propasal to abolish Social Security in favor of private accounts, the elephant in the room, the issue the media seems to be avoiding, is Iraq. Bush is asking the American people to take an enormous risk in abandoning a program that has worked successfully for almost seventy years, because there is a possibility, in a worst-case-scenario, that it might have trouble making full payments to retirees forty (or fifty, depending on who's doing the estimate) years from now. Most of us aren't policy wonks on the issue, so we pretty much have to make assumptions as to who is giving us reliable information about the problem. Even if you don't believe the President lied about Iraq's possession of WMD's, you have to admit his statements leading into war were reckless, and for the most part, untrue, and he didn't go out of his way to avail himself of differing viewpoints. And it's also safe to say that his handling of the economy has not been reassuring; if anything, he won reelection in spite of his economic policies, not because of them.

So what, if anything, has changed since March, 2003 that would give us any reason to trust him now?