Lift a Pint for Coalitions
By DAVID BROOKS

I spent much of last week talking with Republicans about Social Security reform, but I didn't expect to find myself salivating over the phone. I was in a hotel room in St. Paul when I connected with Senator Lindsey Graham. As he spoke, I could hear Irish music in the background. I could hear laughter and conviviality. It turned out that he was calling me from a pub in Dublin.

In a pub. Well, that explains his support for destroying the "security" part of "Social Security."

Graham added that he would love to embrace the sort of bill that his New Hampshire colleague John Sununu is proposing, which would create private accounts and wouldn't reduce benefits or raise taxes to pay the transition costs. But like most smart Republicans I spoke with this week, Graham realizes that you can't pass a major entitlement reform without significant Democratic support.

"If John can get Democratic support, count me in," he was saying, as a great roar of laughter arose from the pub behind him. But he knows that most Republicans will never agree to a bill that balloons the deficit and transforms a beloved program if it doesn't have bipartisan backing to give them political cover.

Then what the hell have they been doing for the last four years?

Whether they like it or not, Republicans and Democrats are going to have to meet privately in rooms and negotiate with one another. They're going to have to develop some level of trust so they can make unpopular suggestions and know they won't read about it in the next day's papers. They are going to have to compromise, reach a deal and then stick together in the face of the special-interest onslaught.

The plan to screw Social S------y IS a special-interest onslaught. And I WANT TO HEAR EVER UNPOPULAR SUGGESTION MADE.

Maybe the context for old-fashioned coalition building no longer exists. There aren't as many cross-party friendships as before, nor as many master deal makers. But somehow we're going to have to fix Social Security so the baby boom generation doesn't imprison its children in a fortress of debt. We're going to have to bring the entitlement system into the era of longevity. And if this culture of negotiation is to be recreated, I'm thinking of a pub - far away and in a happy, happy place - where it just might start.

Yup. Get folks drunk enough and they'll vote for anything.