Roger and Peggy Carrell and her elderly mother lined up at 4:30 Friday morning to get a good seat at the Qwest Center for President Bush's Social Security roadshow. When they got inside, well in advance of the 8:30 start time, the Mutual of Omaha choir and a troupe of swing dancers revved up the crowd, which grew to more than 10,000 people.

There's no doubt the city of Omaha - including the anti-Bush protesters outside the arena - was excited about a rare presidential visit. But it's also clear that Mr. Bush still faces an uphill climb in selling a plan for partial privatization of Social Security, even after a five-state blitz before sympathetic audiences.

"Some people think he's trying to take away Social Security from everyone," says Mr. Carrell, who owns a surveying company. "The information he gave out is what everyone needs to look at. But I don't know how you do that, because you're getting all these negative people."

The Omaha event had a similar structure to the others: There were the visuals - a big chart showing how the number of workers supporting each beneficiary has shrunk since 1950 from 16 to 3.3. Another graphic showed how in 2018, incoming payroll taxes will no longer cover all the promised Social Security benefits and by 2042, the system will be insolvent.

Bush energetically strode across the stage, microphone in hand, and made his pitch - a more conversational version of his State of the Union appeal to revamp the retirement system. Then he settled into a chair alongside a preselected panel - one expert and four "regular folks" who represented different demographic groups, including a42-year-old employee of Omaha Steaks with a wife and three kids and a 57-year-old divorced secretary with three grown children. One is mentally challenged.

In this chat-show portion of the event, Bush asks every panel member to tell his or her story, which includes, of course, a conclusion that allowing younger workers to put some of their Social Security withholding into a personal retirement account, invested conservatively in stocks and bonds, is the way to go. (For details on Bush's plan, see chart.)

The inheritability of such accounts is another appealing feature. To Rose Davis, who teaches at a community college, that factor is central: When her single mother died in December at age 67, all the payroll taxes she had put into Social Security over the years remained in the system, and won't go to either of her adult daughters - including Ms. Davis's sister, who has three children and who gave up her business to care for her ailing mother. Now, says Davis, she has to help support her sister's family.

"In other words," Bush amplified, "if you're dying earlier than expected, the money you put in the system simply goes to pay somebody else. One of the benefits of an 'ownership society' is you could decide what to do with your own assets. Remember, it's your money to begin with."

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