Your view model doesn't seem adapted to what you are trying to do in the view (which according to your question is show a dropdown list and preselect a value based on some property on your view model).
So a far more realistic view model would be this:
public class TaskEditViewModel
{
public string Completion { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Actions
{
get
{
return new[]
{
new SelectListItem { Value = "close", Text = "Close Task" },
new SelectListItem { Value = "open", Text = "Reopen Task" },
};
}
}
}
then you could have a controller action which will populate and pass this view model to the view:
public ActionResult Foo()
{
var model = new TaskEditViewModel();
// this will automatically preselect the second item in the list
model.Completion = "open";
return View(model);
}
and finally inside your strongly typed view you could use the DropDownListFor
helper to render this dropdown:
@model TaskEditViewModel
@Html.DropDownListFor(x => x.Completion, Model.Actions)