In a battle-seasoned White House, where sex scandals come and go, where the harshest Republican bluster can be deflected and where the thorniest policy questions are routinely polled into submission, it takes something truly scary to cause real trepidation. But fear suffused the White House last fall when members of President Clinton's economic team began their first, tentative debate on tinkering with Social Security. Even on internal schedules that do not leave the building, they cloaked their sessions under the name "special-issue meetings." To stay below the radar, they skulked into the office of National Economic Council chairman Gene Sperling rather...
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