It’s like November never happened.

President Bush is out on the road, having hit 25 states in the past month on his tour to drum up support for carving private accounts out of Social Security. So far, the campaign has been more Dukakis than Bush, though — support for private accounts has dropped every single week.

The only group clearly supportive of such a change is our very own 18- to 29-year-old demographic. This appears to be mostly because we don’t know or care about it. The more our peers hear about the idea, the less they like it.

And so, it happens that Bush was at a community college in Iowa on Wednesday, preaching the private account gospel to a packed house. As was true all through the campaign, tickets were available only through the offices of Republican legislators. And it now appears that, much like the campaign, citizens lacking in loyalty are being shown the door.

Last week in Denver, a Republican Party staffer dressed as a Secret Service agent removed three people from a similar Bush speech because the car they drove to the event has a bumper sticker reading, “No blood for oil,” according to the Rocky Mountain News.

If this sounds familiar, it is because booting dissenters, even quiet ones, was common practice by the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. The main difference now is that Bush is wearing his “president” hat, yet still excluding Americans from what are ostensibly town hall meetings.

At some point, cynicism about all of this sets in. Between paying off commentators to speak favorably of White House policies and producing hundreds of fake news clips for local television, is it any wonder that the public road show is staged, as well?

The fact of the matter is that these different actions add up to an attack on constructive discourse and debate. By keeping dissenters from town hall meetings, the Bush crew tries to leave the impression that there is no significant dissent. Instead of engaging the American public in an honest discussion of the issue, our tax money is spent once again on a partisan media campaign.

At least it isn’t working. It is a credit to the people of this country that we aren’t as easily manipulated as the current administration seems to believe, at least on this issue. Still, it is difficult to tell what the future impact of the president’s policy of faking the news and staging events will be. We’d love for someone in the White House have a change of heart and stop this madness. Realistically, we hope that people remain skeptical and that future presidents take honesty and openness more seriously.