Note to Obama: Wait Until Second Term to Pull a Dubya

COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama's news conference on Monday sent shock waves through the liberal and Democratic communities of America. Did a Democratic president just say that entitlement programs should be on the table as bargaining tools alongside tax breaks and loopholes closings for the wealthy in the debt ceiling talks? A quick history lesson might be in order for the incumbent president, one that saw another president try to touch an entitlement program only to lose his political credibility.

President George W. Bush barely won the 2004 election, but afterward, heady with the victory and the popular mandate, he set about restructuring Social Security. The problem wasn't that the Social Security system did not need fixing, tweaking or being made more efficient. It did (and still does). What the American people objected to was the plan by which the Bush administration suggested it be overhauled -- partial privatization, basically gambling on the stock market to produce retirement funds for the elderly. Wildly unpopular, the proposed legislation went nowhere.

And now, just a little over a half-decade later, President Obama has offered spending cuts that would impact Social Security and Medicare.

This after Democratic leaders of both chambers of Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have signaled that Social Security and Medicare never be put on the table in the debt ceiling talks. The programs are the Democrats crown jewels of achievement.

The programs are also very popular among the electorate. A Pew Research poll issued last week indicated that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were all good for the country (all programs scoring over 77 percent). Over a third of respondents said the programs worked pretty well, with over 50 percent saying that the programs needed to undergo major changes or be completely rebuilt. Still, the poll indicated that 60 percent of Americans wanted entitlements to remain untouched even in the debate over the budget deficit.

President Bush also had trouble selling his comprehensive immigration reform, which was an ongoing concern in 2005 and 2006. The reforms never materialized because of the president's lost political capital (which he was quoted after the 2004 election as having and determined to spend it), not to mention an oppositional populist movement that saw the legislation as amnesty to illegal immigrants.

But the Social Security privatization and the immigration reform legislation occurred during President Bush's second term. President Obama, facing re-election, has already incurred the wrath of many of the liberals in his party by not closing the Guantanamo detention center and not pulling American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Offering cherished entitlement programs in the debt ceiling negotiations when the public and his party are opposed to the maneuver could cost him the 2012 election. Much as President Bush angered the conservative base with his support of the immigration legislation, Obama has done the same with his base with unkept promises. And now he has made an incredibly (politically) dangerous proposal.

The Democrats won the midterm elections in 2006.

President Obama could learn a lot from the history of his predecessor. And he should note a significant difference between the two administrations: Bush made his mistakes after he was re-elected.