As last Thursday's Iowa caucus drew to a close, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd viewed his .02% of the final tally and abruptly announced he was ending his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The senator told 100 supporters in Des Moines: ‘I am not going anywhere. I will be fighting for the United States.’
Actually, that wasn't an entirely correct statement. Dodd is going somewhere: back to Capitol Hill and his seat as the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Indeed, his return trip could not have been better planned.
As part of his bid for the White House by way of the Iowa voters, Dodd seemed to put his priorities in a strange order – made all the more stranger due to the current state of the mortgage banking industry and the housing market. Serious and long-overdue reforms relating to the government-sponsored enterprises and the still-unregulated mortgage broker industry never occurred, and legislation designed to protect borrowers from predatory lending wasn't introduced by Dodd until mid-December, months after the subprime debacle began to disfigure the national economy and global markets.
So where was Dodd all of this time? Living in Iowa, incredibly – he moved to a rented house in Des Moines to focus full time on his presidential bid via that state's caucus. His absence from Washington raised grumbles from industry leaders and observers, with the most acidic comment coming from the left-leaning magazine The Nation via its headline: ‘Dodd Makes An Impact – As A No-Show Banking Chair.’ The Nation also pointed out that Dodd's committee held only one hearing between mid-October and mid-December, regarding shareholders rights in foreign-owned companies.
Dodd's absence during his presidential campaign did not leave a permanent void in Washington's response to the current crisis. The White House, of course, successfully brokered the quasi-solution with the industry to freeze reset rates on a finite number of foreclosure-facing borrowers with potentially lethal adjustable-rate mortgages. The administration was also the driving force behind the HOPE NOW coalition to help subprime borrowers facing peril.
Across Capitol Hill, Dodd's House of Representatives counterpart, Rep. Barney Frank, kept industry-related issues alive by navigating his Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act through his chamber of the Congress. The Senate's equivalent to Frank's bill, however, has yet to be scheduled for debate and a vote.
Ironically, Dodd might have killed his own campaign by focusing too closely on it. In Iowa, the main concern among voters appeared to be domestic issues relating to the economy. Dodd could have easily used his power role in the Senate to show he was a champion for the average American. Instead, he largely neglected his Senate duties, only to become lost among the second-tier candidates.
Now that Dodd Quixote's presidential race is done, perhaps Congress can finally address important issues that have been overlooked for too long. Whether Dodd will bring about change that helps or hurts the industry remains to be seen – but at least there will be someone in the driver's seat at the Senate Banking Committee.
– Phil Hall, editor, Secondary Marketing Executive
(Please address all comments regarding this opinion column to hallp@sme-online.com)
