Thanks in part to the work of think tanks like Cato, Heritage and the National Center for Policy Analysis, Bush is also benefiting from a public opinion climate that is far more receptive to changing the government retirement system than it was 20 years ago.

That is partly because these groups have broadcast a consistent message: Social Security is financially unsustainable and will collapse after the baby boom generation retires. Although that is debatable, polls show that most Americans lack confidence in the program's future.

"It started as the third rail of politics, but over a period of time conservatives kept at it until [their assumptions] began to sound like common sense," said George Lakoff, an expert in political communication at UC Berkeley.

After that experience, analysts Butler and Germanis argued in their prescient 1983 article -- provocatively titled "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy" -- that privatizing Social Security required a calculated, long-term campaign to transform the political environment.

The steps they recommended were strikingly similar to the course Bush has taken: reassuring retirees that their benefits would not be cut and arguing that Social Security is financially unstable.

"Our reform strategy involves what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it," they wrote. "An economic education campaign ... must be undertaken to demonstrate the weaknesses of the current system."

What's more, they argued, "building a constituency for Social Security reform requires mobilizing the various coalitions that stand to benefit from the change.... The business community and financial institutions, in particular, would be an obvious element in the constituency."

That foreshadowed the course conservatives took through the 1980s and 1990s.

The group is planning a nationwide campaign of town hall meetings, direct mailings and local TV ads to get out its message, which includes support for private Social Security investment accounts, Max said.

Now that he is pushing for Congress to act, Bush is tapping the community of long-standing advocates of private accounts. The White House regularly consults the think-tank experts who have been writing about Social Security for decades. The administration's point man on Social Security, Charles P. Blahous III, is former executive director of a business coalition formed to lobby for personal accounts.

The revolving door has swept a top Cato analyst into the upper echelons of Bush's apparatus for promoting the new policy: Andrew G. Biggs, who spent several years at Cato, now is associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration.

For these free-market devotees, winning the Social Security battle would be more than just the capstone of Bush's second-term agenda. It would also be the culmination of a generation-long drive to chip away at the New Deal's cornerstone and transform the role of the federal government.

"You have extremely high expectations among conservatives that real change is going to take place," said Stephen Moore, an activist who backs overhauling Social Security. "Conservatives have waited 20 years for this alignment."

"They will definitely have a war chest now," said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a Washington-based group that is battling the president's plan.

The groups, including manufacturers, restaurant owners and small businesses, say they will spend millions of dollars to support President Bush's efforts to create private Social Security investment accounts. Leaders say the campaign is being driven by fears that, without an overhaul, the government could resort to raising the Social Security payroll tax to bridge any funding gaps.      
                                           . . .

The coalition's budget "will be a lot larger than in 2002," when it spent $5 million promoting its viewpoint, he said.

"The president deserves the bipartisan support of the Congress and the strong backing of the business community" in addressing Social Security changes, John Engler, president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, said in a recent open letter to members. The re-education campaign is in full swing.

The manufacturers group is the principal sponsor of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a coalition seeking to revamp Social Security. On its website, the alliance lists the creation of private accounts as its No. 1 principle; No. 2 is to oppose a payroll tax increase.

Danner of the independent business federation met with representatives of other business associations this month, a gathering organized by the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, or Compass.

The coalition is led by the Business Roundtable, a group of blue-chip U.S. companies including Coca-Cola Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and IBM Corp.

Compass was launched in 2002 to promote ideas for restructuring the Social Security system but has been mostly dormant for two years. Bush's decision to move Social Security to the top of his action list has rejuvenated the group, said Derrick Max, who is coordinating the coalition's activities.

The manufacturers group said it had been joined by more than 40 other organizations and companies in the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. Members include brokerage firm Edward Jones & Co., technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co. and the National Restaurant Assn.

The restaurant association has been roused to action in part because the industry claims the largest U.S. workforce apart from government, said Rob Green, vice president of federal relations for the Washington-based group.

"If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."  Warren Buffet