numbers were right, I would suffer a landslide defeat.
I walked from the airplane to Marine One in a daze. The ten-minute flight to the White House felt like hours. Finally the wheels of the chopper hit the South Lawn. The press corps swarmed to get a good shot for the evening news. Karen Hughes had good advice: “Everybody smile!”
Exiting Marine One on Election Day 2004. We’d just received exit polls showing I would lose badly.
I went upstairs to the residence and moped around the Treaty Room. I just couldn’t believe it. After all the hard work of the past four years, and all the grueling months on the campaign trail, I was going to be voted out of office decisively. I knew life would go on, as it had for Dad. But the rejection was going to sting.
Before long, Karl called. He had been crunching the numbers and was convinced that the methodology was flawed. I felt relieved and angry at the same time. I worried that the bogus numbers would demoralize our supporters and depress turnout in time zones where the polling places were still open. We were thinking the same thing:
For the second time in four years, Karl Rove disproved the exit polls. My close friends Don Evans and Brad Freeman look on and Andy works the phones in the State Dining Room.
At 8:00 p.m., the polls in Florida closed. As Jeb predicted that morning, the early returns looked promising. The exit poll results in South Carolina and Mississippi were quickly contradicted by solid victories in both states. The rest of the East Coast came in as expected. The outcome would turn on four states: Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, and Ohio. Ken Mehlman, my brilliant campaign manager who had organized a historic effort to turn out the vote, was confident we had won all four states. Each had been called in our favor by at least one news network. But after the fiasco of 2000, no network wanted to be the first to put me over the top.
The focus was Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes. I held a solid lead of more than 120,000 votes. The clock struck midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock. At around 2:45, I took a phone call from Tony Blair. He told me he had gone to bed in London thinking I had lost and was prepared to deal with President Kerry. “Not only did you win, George,” he said, “you got more votes than any president in history.”
“If only the Kerry campaign would recognize that,” I replied. “I haven’t been up this late since college!”
At around four o’clock, we started hearing rumors that Kerry and Edwards planned to file a lawsuit contesting the vote in Ohio. In another replay of 2000, several advisers urged me to declare victory even though the networks hadn’t called the race and my opponent had not conceded. Four years earlier, it was Jeb who wisely advised me against giving my speech in Austin. This time it was Laura. “George, you can’t go out there,” she said. “Wait until you’ve been declared the winner.”
In the White House residence on Election Night, 2004, waiting for the decision.
At around the same time, Dan Bartlett picked up a useful piece of intelligence. Nicolle Wallace, my campaign’s communications director, had connected Dan with Kerry aide Mike McCurry. McCurry told him the senator would make the right decision if we gave him time. “Don’t press the guy,” Dan advised.
Once again, a disappointed crowd waited for a candidate who never arrived. I so wanted to give my supporters the victory party we had been denied in 2000. But it wasn’t to be. Just after 5:00 a.m., I sent Andy Card in my place. “President Bush decided to give Senator Kerry the respect of more time to reflect on the results of this election,” he said. “We are convinced that President Bush has won reelection with at least 286 electoral votes.”
At 11:02 the next morning, my personal assistant, Ashley Kavanaugh, opened the door to the Oval Office. “Mr. President,” she said, “I have Senator Kerry on the line.”
John was gracious. I told him he was a worthy opponent who had run a spirited campaign. I called Laura and hugged the small group of senior aides gathered in the Oval Office. I walked down the hallway to Dick’s office, where I gave him a hearty handshake. Dick isn’t really the hugging type.
Eventually I reached Mother and Dad on the phone. After staying up most of the night, they had slipped out of the White House early that morning and flown back to Houston without knowing the results. “Congratulations, son,” Dad said. He said it more with relief than joy. We hadn’t talked about it, but 2000 was not the only election that had been on our minds. We both remembered the pain of 1992. I could tell he was very happy I would not have to go through what he had.
After its bleak start, election night 2004 had turned into a big victory. I became the first president to win a majority of the popular vote since Dad in 1988. As in 2002, Republicans gained ground in both the House and Senate.
The day after Kerry conceded, I held a morning press conference. One of the reporters asked if I felt “more free.”
I thought about the ambitious agenda I had outlined over the past year. “Let me put it to you this way,” I said. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”
For as long as I can remember, Social Security has been the third rail of American politics. Grab ahold of it, and you’re toast.
In 2005, I did more than touch the third rail. I hugged it. I did so for one reason: It is unfair to make a generation of young people pay into a system that is going broke.
Created by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. The checks collected by retirees are financed by payroll taxes paid by today’s workers. The system worked fine when there were forty workers for every beneficiary, as there were in 1935. But over time, demographics changed. Life expectancy rose. The birthrate fell. As a result, by 2005 there were only three workers paying into the Social Security system for every beneficiary taking money out. By the time a young person starting work in the first decade of the twenty-first century retires, the ratio will be two to one.
To compound the problem, Congress had set Social Security benefits to rise faster than inflation. Starting in 2018, Social Security was projected to take in less money than it paid out. The shortfall would increase every year, until the system hit bankruptcy in 2042. The year 2042 sounded a long way off, until I did the math. That was when my daughters, born in 1981, would be approaching retirement.
For someone looking to take on big issues, it didn’t get much bigger than reforming Social Security. I decided there was no better time to launch the effort than when I was fresh off reelection.
I started by setting three principles for reform. First, nothing would change for seniors or people near retirement. Second, I would seek to make Social Security solvent without raising payroll taxes, which had already expanded from about 2 percent to 12 percent. Third, younger workers should have the option of earning a better return by investing part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account.
Personal retirement accounts would be new to Social Security, but most Americans were familiar with the concept. Like 401(k) accounts, they could be invested in a safe mix of stock and bond funds, which would grow over time and benefit from the power of compound interest. The accounts would be managed by reputable financial institutions charging low fees, and there would be prohibitions against withdrawing the money before retirement. Even at a conservative rate of return of 3 percent, an account holder’s money would double every twenty-four years. By contrast, Social Security’s return of 1.2 percent would take sixty years to double. Unlike Social Security benefits, personal retirement accounts would be an asset owned by individual workers, not the government, and could be passed from one generation to the next.
In early 2005, I sat down with Republican congressional leaders to talk through our legislative strategy. I told them modernizing Social Security would be my first priority. The reaction was lukewarm, at best.
“Mr. President,” one leader said, “this is not a popular issue. Taking on Social Security will cost us seats.”
“No,” I shot back, “failing to tackle this issue will cost us seats.”
It was clear they were thinking about the two-year election cycle of Capitol Hill. I was thinking about the responsibility of a president to lead on issues affecting the long-term prospects of the country. I reminded them that
