But surveys also suggest Americans remain ambivalent about Bush's proposal to give workers born in 1950 or later the option to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts containing stock and bond mutual funds.
As envisioned by Bush, the accounts would build up over time, and could be passed on to heirs if a worker died before they were exhausted. But workers who opted to open them would be required to accept an offsetting reduction in their traditional Social Security benefits, on top of any across-the-board benefit changes made to restore the system's solvency.
Recent polls show varying levels of support for the investment accounts, depending on how they were characterized and whether they were linked to reductions in future benefits. But the polls generally have found little increase in public support, and some suggested the more Americans heard about the president's approach, the more wary they became.
"One thing this roadshow has achieved is that it's made the do-nothing approach more difficult to defend," said the administration advisor. "On the other piece of this -- the role that personal accounts play as part of the solution -- I don't think we've gotten anywhere. In fact I think we've probably backslid."
Bush advisors and allies say the president's public relations offensive was planned as a multi-step process:
First, convince the public Social Security faces problems, while assuring current retirees and those near retirement that their benefits wouldn't be affected. Then, generate public support for personal accounts, while prodding Congress to come up with a specific package of tax and benefit changes to restore solvency.
"Things are not as bleak as they seem," said David John, a Social Security specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank who is participating in the campaign to promote private accounts.
"There were some people both within the White House and on the Hill who were expecting a sudden, spontaneous outpouring," John said. "What we're seeing instead is slowly developing support for personal accounts. It's going much more slowly than we had hoped, but I think there is progress."
Times staff writers Richard Simon, Janet Hook and Joel Havemann contributed to this report.
