The New York Times glossed over it in a front-page story Monday as an anecdote illustrating the influence on policy of a top aide to President Bush, Karl Rove. But to free-market, growth-oriented followers of the debate on a Social Security reform, the vehemence of the White House’s opposition to the Ryan-Sununu plan on the issue came as a real disappointment.

The Times on Monday described Jack Kemp’s advocacy of Ryan-Sununu as “causing problems for President Bush’s drive to overhaul Social Security.” Mr. Rove was said by the Times to consider Ryan-Sununu “unworkable.” A White House spokesman, Kenneth Lisaius, backed away from that a bit when we reached him Monday.

“The administration is open to a variety of approaches and ideas including many ideas in Ryan-Sununu,” Mr. Lisaius said. “The president appreciates anyone, including Rep. Ryan and Senator Sununu, who come forward with ideas that lead to permanent solvency and engage in this important debate.”

Mr. Kemp had declined to comment to the Times, but he told us yesterday that he has written 10 newspaper columns in support of the Ryan-Sununu plan and doesn’t intend to stop. “I believe that the logic is inherent. It will be proven the most efficacious of all the reforms,” he said.

He compared the current resistance to the Ryan-Sununu plan to the resistance he initially encountered when he first introduced the Kemp-Roth reductions in marginal tax rates that eventually became law in the Reagan administration.

He called Ryan-Sununu “very bold,” but at the same time “a very solid, thoughtful, positive, progressive reform.” He said the plan dramatically shifts the debate on Social Security “away from solvency alone, to the democratization of our capitalistic economy.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, told us that he speaks to Mr. Rove about his Social Security legislation about once a week. Under the Ryan-Sununu plan, workers would be able to shift to their personal accounts 10 percentage points of the current 12.4% Social Security payroll tax on the first $10,000 of wages each year, and 5 percentage points on all taxable wages above that.

The average account contribution among all workers would be 6.4 percentage points. That makes for much larger accounts than the plan Mr. Bush outlined in his State of the Union address, which capped the private accounts at 4 percentage points.

“The bigger the accounts, the bigger the short-term transition costs,” Mr. Ryan told us. “That is something that the administration is worried about. … They are afraid it’ll mess up their short term budget number.”

Messrs. Ryan and Kemp both emphasized to us they are not seeking a fight with the White House. “We’re all on the same team,” Mr. Ryan said. Quoth Mr. Kemp: “I’m 70 years old. I’m not picking fights with anyone.”

It’d be a terrible mistake for the Bush White House to try to sideline the Ryan-Sununu plan, which strikes us as one of the most promising of all the ways on the table to overhaul Social Security. It’s been scored by the chief actuary of the Social Security administration as a way of fixing the program without cutting benefits or raising taxes.

Mr. Bush is trying to convince the American people that personal accounts are a good idea. Mr. Rove isn’t doing the president any favors by scaring the public with the idea that if the accounts are too big it’ll somehow be bad for the economy.

A more growth-oriented message would be that the bigger the accounts, the greater the benefits. At the least, it’s time for the Republicans in Washington to start moving away from negotiating among themselves and toward a debate with the Democrats.