Americans will be soaking up the upcoming debate on Social Security, as it heats up and the media offer a burst of coverage. Several patterns appear likely. Americans are unlikely to support a wholesale replacing of the current Social Security system with a new privatized one. The combination of risk aversion, stock market fluctuations, and overwhelming support for the existing program guarantee significant resistance.

Americans, on the other hand, can be influenced to consider some reform short of wholesale changes. But, even the usual menu of incremental adjustments will require concerted leadership and compromise solutions that unify political leaders.

Whether Americans can be brought around to support reform of Social Security will primarily depend on the content and acrimony of elite debate, and the media's portrayal of the debate and Americans' reaction to it. Our analysis of public opinion toward Social Security has pointed to numerous cases where public knowledge and preferences echoed information available to it. Inaccurate or implausible views by the public can reflect distorted or vague rather than any innate limitations of Americans.

If the past is any guide, journalists and policy makers should be on alert to avoid two pitfalls. First, political activists now prepare for policy debates by using polls to carefully calibrate their public presentations to win over public support. Combattant in the imminent Social Security debate are likely to craft their talk to frame the issues in ways that are most likely to sway Americans.

It is entirely predictable that the research on public opinion will define the terms on which the public debate is fought. As we indicated above, framing privatization in terms that stress increased choice and room for individual independence can boost support for it; by contrast, highlighting the risks of stock investments and the costs of the transition pull the rug out on privatization.

The nature of the upcoming Social Security debate is likely to challenge seriously the presumption that politicians pander by following public opinion when they make policy. Public opinion, as we have seen, does not rank Social Security as a pressing crisis, and it is opposed to privatization and quite ambivalent regarding incremental changes. If politicians slavishly followed public opinion, they probably would pass on the issue. But, President Clinton and members of Congress are moving forward and will work to direct public opinion toward their preferred proposals. The presumption of pandering will be flipped on its head: instead of public opinion research driving policy decisions, policy decisions will drive public opinion research toward identifying the best language and arguments for presenting the preferred policy.

The second pitfall involves the media, who will communicate the debate to Americans. Whether Americans' knowledge about Social Security will be deepened depends on journalists passing up excessive coverage of the political fight in favor of substantive coverage. Our analysis of previous debates over Social Security suggests that journalists have typically by-passed substance in favor disproportionate coverage of conflict and crisis.

The fact that political activists will be fighting for public opinion gives journalists an especially important responsibility to fully report the state of public thinking. Our recent "pollwatch," which evaluated media reporting on public opinion toward entitlements, suggests that journalists load their stories with shallow references to polls as a quick frame of reference -- the journalistic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. Nearly 40% of references to polls that we examined offered no actual evidence at all. Only a quarter of the references discussed survey results in an indepth manner as the main focus of a story; the overwhelming majority of references cited polls in passing. In addition, polls were often briefly cited in a rapid-fire delivery. Over 80% of the references to them consumed the equivalent of 10 lines of newspaper text or less; half of the references were 5 lines or less. It was rare for poll results to receive much genuine discussion.

Journalists have too often settled for generic characterizations of "poll after poll" and to vacuous references to "strong" or "weak" public attitudes, which leaves the audience helpless to evaluate the public's preferences on its own. Journalists ought to present far more fully the multiple and competing concerns that Americans bring to their evaluations. Let policy makers wrestle with aligning their preferences with those of the public.