OS 2.0

In January, before the State of the Union address, the rumor was that President Bush would use the speech to unveil his vision of the "Ownership Society." The former part-owner of the Texas Rangers was going to outline a sweeping domestic agenda around this theme, we were told.

Conservative columnists like David Brooks helped to lay the groundwork for the speech, offering a preview glimpse of what this Ownership Society agenda would look like. Ownership, it turns out, was a new way of saying privatization. Which was in turn another way of saying "tax cuts for the wealthy."

Apparently this repackaging didn't poll very well. Bush's actual SOTU started off with what seemed like a response to Howard Dean, then rambled around to include a section of finger-wagging at professional athletes who use steroids.

Only one odd phrase in this odd speech seemed to contain a remnant of the touted OS agenda:

"We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people."

It's not obvious what, if anything, the word ownership means in that sentence. (The American people already own the Social Security system. At least we've already paid for it.)

In any case, it now seems the Ownership Society is back. Tapped's Garance Franke-Ruta notes the latest Bush-Cheney campaign ad is titled "Ownership," and helpfully transcribes it for us:

One of the most important parts of a reform agenda is to encourage people to own something. Own their own home, own their own business, own their own health care plan, or own a piece of their retirement. Reforms that trust the people, reforms that say government must stand on the side of people. Because I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America.

Franke-Ruta emphasizes that last phrase, noting its disturbing implications:

Now, we all know that property owners are more likely to take care of their lawns than are renters, but that doesn't exactly seem to be what Bush is talking about here. Can Bush really be saying that if you rent your home, you lack the same investment in America? That if you're just one of the little people and don't own something big, that you have no stake in the future of the nation? Or that, if you're an employee instead of a business owner, you somehow lack the same vital patriotism, inhibited as you are by your relative poverty?

Is he really saying the poor and lower-middle classes lack a claim to the nation's future, or concern for it, and will not have it, until they own more things? Because that's what Bush seems to be suggesting. And it's a pretty radical condemnation of those without substantial means.

It seems to me that people who don't own things also have a vital interest in their nation's future, because they are the ones most in need and also most likely to be sent off to fight for the country. Meanwhile the upper classes, the "owners" such as Bush, will likely do pretty well for themselves no matter what happens or who is president.

My guess is that this is precisely the response that led to the scuttling of the earlier Ownership Society speech.

Bush's endorsement of "ownership" is ambiguous. He might be promoting broader ownership to ensure that everyone has — and benefits from — "a vital stake in the future of America." Or he might simply be taking sides — declaring his allegiance to the owners and their interests.

That second reading isn't very charitable. But based on the content of what we've seen so far of Bush's OS agenda — privatization and tax breaks only for those who can afford to take advantage of them — it seems the more accurate interpretation.