Back in the early 1990s my then writing partner, Bruce Duffy, and I were approached by Fannie Mae with the idea of ghosting a book for its CEO, Jim Johnson.
We were invited to Fannie Mae's plush offices on Wisconsin Avenue to meet with several members of the company's public relations department.
After they'd explained what they had in mind (which eventually became the 1996 book you see pictured above), my partner—who was, at that point, not terribly well schooled in the ways of the corporate world—blurted out: "I don't think we'd be interested in doing a book like that."
I gave him a kick under the conference table and tried to walk it back ("What Bruce actually meant was …"), but the damage had been done.
We didn't get a callback.
And, in point of fact, Bruce was just saying what both of us had been thinking: What a completely self-serving piece of corporate bullshit. Who would want to plunk down $25.00 to buy a Fannie Mae marketing brochure?
The book got written without us (from the looks of it, with the expert ghostwriting help of Democratic speechwriter and strategist Bob Shrum). And, of course, it had a quick trajectory from the New in Non-Fiction shelves to the remainder table. (I bought my copy from an Amazon reseller recently for $.01, or roughly the current value of a share of Fannie Mae.)
A blurb on the back cover of Showing America a New Way Home stands out for its effusive sycophancy. It comes from Angelo Mozilo, the recently disgraced CEO of Countrywide Financial, one of the big mortgage originators at the heart of the subprime mess: "Jim Johnson has been the most vocal and active leader in closing the shelter gap in repairing the important fabric that binds our great country."
Not surprisingly, the book also includes a plug for Mozilo as well, on page 121:
The most important single determinant of the viability of the mortgage for borderline applicants is not their capacity to pay, although that is properly and inevitably part of the equation. The single most important factor is their commitment to pay. That commitment can be hard to prove, and its intensity can be even harder to measure. Angelo Mozilla, the CEO of Countrywide Home Loans and one of the mortgage industry's most farsighted leaders, has urged mortgage institutions to welcome and prize home buyers who say (and mean it), "we are so thrilled to own our home that we are horrified by the notion that we could lose it. We will make enormous sacrifices -- take additional jobs, ask members of our family to contribute to the mortgage, sacrifice in other areas, cutbacks in consumption and expenditures. But we will not fail." That, in the end, is the real definition of a good risk. but if an applicant's financial situation is borderline, if the future market of the house the applicant wants to buy is threatened because it is in a troubled neighborhood or declining market, if there is uncertainty about the applicant's commitment to pay, then there is also a great risk of failure.
At Fannie Mae we are consciously using our enormous capacity and influence in the home mortgage system to help lenders hone their ability to calculate the likelihood of making a successful lung to those who have been or might be denied we are seeking, in concert with lenders and other institutions, to open a dialogue with every potential homebuyer who has some real likelihood of success in paying off a mortgage.
[Emphasis added.]
Obama adviser Johnson has lately been named as a recipient of one of the many below-market loans that Angelo made to high-ranking government officials and well-connected figures in the private sector. (Other "friends of Angelo" included Senators Christopher Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of
the Banking Committee; Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota,
chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee; former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson;
former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala; and former
U.N. ambassador and assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.
Reading Showing America a New Way Home a dozen years later is an eye-opening experience. If you want to understand how we got into the whole subprime mess, I can't think of a better one cent investment.
And, pretty soon, that may be as much of an investment as any of us can afford.
I was saddened to discover this post from Captain Ed Morrisey:
So often in this business, we become friends with people whom we’ve never met face to face. That’s certainly true of Dean Barnett of the Weekly Standard. I’ve long admired his writing, and Dean has always been kind enough to request me as a guest whenever he guest hosts for Hugh Hewitt. He calls me his “crazy uncle”, a humorous reference to Jeremiah Wright.
My friend Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson tells me that Dean has had to be admitted to the hospital and is currently in the ICU with a terrible attack of his cystic fibrosis. I’d like to ask Hot Air readers for their prayers for my friend and his family. I know they will appreciate the support.
I’ll update you as I hear more.
I've known Dean since his Soxblog days, before his collaboration with Hugh Hewitt and The Weekly Standard. Like Captain Ed, I've never met him face to face, though we've talked on the phone and corresponded on and off over the past four years. He's one of the most decent, intelligent people I've met in the blogosphere.
Dean once wrote:
As I grew sicker, I had what for me was an extremely comforting insight. I came to view serious and progressive illness as an ever constricting circle with oneself at the center. The interior of the circle represents the contents of one’s life. As the circle gets smaller, things that were inside get forced out. Some of these things are dearly missed; others that were once thought precious get forced to the exterior and turn out to go surprisingly unlamented.
At the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left. But as we approach that end, we finally realize that all along, they were what mattered most. As a consequence, life often remains beautiful and worthwhile right up until the end.
I profoundly hope this isn't the end, and that Dean will live to blog another day.
For those of you who've never seen Dean, here he is talking about suitcase nukes on FOXnews. (And if that got you wondering about suitcase nukes, here's Dean's TownHall post on the subject.)
Here's Dean's most recent interview with Hugh Hewitt, talking about the first presidential debate.
And hope isn't a strategy (as Rudy Giuliani so eloquently put it).
Even so, the McCain campaign has been offering more of both commodities lately.
From the reporter's notebook of Dean Reynolds (CBS News):
There is an urgency to the McCain campaign now that I don't think was there before. Due to the fact that he is running second, no doubt, but it may also be because McCain has a finishing kick. Whatever the case, he is sharper on the stump than he was before. (Though I would suspect a candidate running behind would want to schedule two or three appearances per day, instead of the one McCain usually does.)
It is true that McCain enjoys taking questions from the audience in town hall-style settings. That doesn't mean he is the master of that kind of forum, it just means he's good at it. He likes to converse with voters. Obama does it well too, but seldom achieves that intangible bond with the people that all politicians crave -- or fake.
Behind the scenes, where the public is not allowed, there are other differences.
Obama's campaign schedule is fuller, more hectic and seemingly improvisational. The Obama aides who deal with the national reporters on the campaign plane are often overwhelmed, overworked and un-informed about where, when, why or how the candidate is moving about. Baggage calls are preposterously early with the explanation that it's all for security reasons.
If so, I would love to have someone from Obama's campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case.
The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans. Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening hours. Our shows place a premium on live reporting from the scene of campaign events. But this campaign can often be found in the air and flying around at the time the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" is broadcast. I suspect there is a feeling within the Obama campaign that the broadcast networks are less influential in the age of the internet and thus needn't be accomodated as in the days of yore. Even if it's true, they are only hurting themselves by dissing audiences that run in the tens of millions every night.
The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.
The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.
So, as Beldar asks, if he can't keep his campaign plane from stinking, what makes anyone think Obama can handle the world's hardest executive job?
???It took him a while (after his run-in with Billy O'Reilly), but Barney Frank has finally found a new scapegoat for the financial meltdown: Racist Republicans!
"Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint."
The editors go on to comment:
No one thinks poor or black people are to blame for the lending mania at the root of the mess. But there is little question that it resulted, at least in part, from a push to relax lending standards so as to make it easier for poor and minority borrowers to get mortgages. This in turn created incentives for banks to make bad loans, many of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac acquired.
An influential 1992 report from the Boston Fed recommended: "Policies regarding applicants with no credit history or problem credit history should be reviewed. Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor. Certain cultures encourage people to 'pay as you go' and avoid debt." The head of the Boston Fed at the time, Richard Syron, was ousted last month as CEO of Freddie Mac.
Not all Democrats agree with Mr. Frank that such policies are off-limits to criticism. Last week Representative Artur Davis of Alabama said in a statement: "Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong."
Mr. Davis is a Member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Wonder if Barney Frank holds Sarah Palin responsible too?
Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Timesreports on this curious exchange between ABC's Jake Tapper and Obama campaign manager David Axelrond:
"So, when did Obama find out that Ayers had been a member of an organization the FBI called a "domestic terrorist" group, and had been, for years, a fugitive from the law?
"I don't know," Axelrod said and Tapper reported.
"I mean it was sometime after their first meetings. And you know, he became aware of it. I don't know the exact moment."
He wasn't aware of who "Ayers" was?
"Yeah," Axelrod said, "I mean, the fact is that like a lot of people who, you know, didn't live through that era -- particularly those who didn't live though that era in Chicago -- It just wasn't. I mean, when he came to Chicago, Ayers was advising Mayor Daley on school reform issues, and that was his profile, was that he was an expert on education."
So, did he know who Ayers was when he went to his home in 1995?
"My understanding is that when he went there, he did not," Axelrod said.
Reporters noticed that clause -- "my understanding is" -- and pressed further. Did Axelrod ask Obama if he knew Ayers' history when he first met with him?
"Yes," Axelrod said.
And he did not know?
"Yes," Axelrod said. "That's what I've said -- I answered the question when I was asked the other day. But no one's suggesting that he never knew. I mean that's not -- we weren't offering that. I wasn't offering it -- I was asked a question that you just asked me and just answered it. I wasn't making an argument about it."
And note who ran the story. Could it be that Obama's honeymoon with the MSM is coming to an end?
UPDATE: This is interesting too. Michelle Obama: "Students and faculty explore these issues in the classroom, but it is an internal conversation. We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and -- directly or indirectly -- this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it."
Pace Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama also wrote a blurb for the book Ayers was promoting at the University of Chicago event, calling it “[a] searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.”
Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review pieces together much of the puzzle of Obama's leftist past here.
This Wednesday, four separate UCI programs – including the department of history; the Center for Research on International and Global Studies at UCI’s School of Social Sciences; the school’s Middle East Studies Student Initiative and its Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies – will host Ibrahim el-Houdaiby, a young member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the leader of its new generation of self-styled “moderate Islamist” activists. Still in his twenties, the Cairo-based Houdaiby has a long lineage in the Brotherhood: His grandfather was
