COMMON SENSE

The Foreclosing of America (Part 1 Of 3)

Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 3, 2007 - 9:10am.

"The more ownership there is in America, the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country." -George W. Bush, June, 2004

The month of June come and gone. And down by the White House, a dog didn't bark. Most years, President Bush has celebrated June - National Homeownership Month - with a splashy speech. Not this year. This year, he stayed as far from the topic as he could get - a topic Karl Rove had hoped to make a cornerstone of his planned thousand-year Republican reign. What went wrong? In the next few posts I'll endeavor to explain.

First, a demonstration of the sheer size of the political bet the Republicans placed on exhorting as many Americans as possible to own their own homes. Exhibit A: the March, 2005 special issue on the "Ownership Society" of the magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, of the conservative movement's flagship think tanks. There are, lead author James Glassman wrote, three aims of Bush's dreamed-of Owernship Society: to "reform" Social Security, to "boost the economy by cutting taxes on dividends," and "to make home buying easier."

As we've said before, there's really no such thing as a conservative think tank. They only have propaganda and political strategy shops. Why did conservatives want every American to have, instead of a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot - or, say, health insurance for every child - a monthly mortgage bill in every mailbox? Reading American Enterprise, Not for reasons of national well-being. It was for the Republican's political well-being.

Here's Grover Norquist:

"Bush's vision also calls for efforts to increase home ownership. Here's a hint of what that coudl mean: in House Speaker Dennis Haster's Congressional district in Illinois, 75-80 percent of voters own their own homes. In Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco, the nubmer is 35 perent.... A transition of great political improtance is under way. Fifty years from now the move to an Ownership Society will be recognized as a change to America's political landscape as dramatic as the move from farms to factories."

Here's James Glassman, a Big Con-man par excellence:

"Bush wants more ownership because he wants to change the shape of America. He understands that people who own stocks and real estate--who possess wealth of their own--have a deeper commitment to their community, a more profound sense of family obligation and personal responsibility, a stronger identification with the national fortunes, and a personal interest in our capitalist economy. (They also have a greater propensity to vote Republican.)...

The only author to raise any sort of caveat - that home prices are skyrocketing out of control - is the neoconservative geographer Joel Kotkin. He blamed, you guessed it, liberals: "Environmental regulations and other growth-constraining factors have inflated housing prices."

As we'll see in the next post, that's absurd. But beyond that, it's rhapsodies all the way around - and especially homeownership's bounties for Republican electoral fortunes: "The places with the higehst levels of homeownership generally vote Republican.... "Our analaysis shows that this connection between homeownership and voting Republcian holds broadly at every level--from large regions all the way down to metro areas....more and more of the places offering new homes to young families following their dreams are in the heart of Red America." Not wanting to own your own home is revealed as downright European; Kotkin singles out Pragague's homeownership rate at "about 12 percent." No Republicans there! He concludes by calling cities like Fresno, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Atlanta "Our New Cities of Aspiration"--"the de facto headquarters of the American dream."

A sidebar informed us, "In simple terms that resonated with much of Middle America, Bush hammered away throughout the campaign on the importance of the 'Ownership Society.' For most Americans, the place where this starts is ownership of one's home."

Once more our conservative think tank hammered home the electoral point: "Married couples with families, a key Bush constituency, had the highest rates among all groups: over 83 percent." No wonder Bush won: "Homeownership momentum continued right up to the election. Sales of new homes rose 4 percent in the fall, to an annual rate of 1.2 million units - the third highest level on record. Sales of previously owned homes also rose to their third highest level."

Especially bustling? California, where first-time homeowners are said to "head for towns like Tracy, Modesto, and Grass Valley. Along the way, many embark on a journey that ends with them voting Republican."

The punchline? Modesto now has one of the top-ten highest foreclosure rate in the nation. Foreclosures there rose almost 4 percent between the fourth quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2007 alone.

Next time: connecting the politics to the policy.