Half credit: Bush's Social Security plan--that is, non-plan--just gets more and more unpopular. But the Democrats shouldn't revel in their brilliance.(Dispatches)

DURING GEORGE W. BUSH's FIRST term and especially after his reelection, Washington settled on a conventional wisdom about his presidency: Bush may be prone to dangerous policy blunders, but his political instinct is unerring.

The unpleasant predicament in which the White House finds itself on its signature second-term domestic-policy initiative--revising Social Security by undoing the New Deal program's social-insurance protections and replacing them with private investments--has upended the consensus. Despite the president's personal public-relations offensive, ...