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."