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“Drug-Addled Wrong”: Mitt Romney Condemns The Auto-Industry Rescue

Looking back over the last three years, there’s arguably no better example of a policy Republicans got wrong than the rescue of the American auto industry.

When President Obama launched his ambitious policy in 2009, he was taking a major gamble — not only with the backbone of American manufacturing, but with his presidency and its ability to use the power of government to repair a private industry facing collapse. As First Read noted at the time, “As the GM bailout goes, so goes the Obama presidency.”

We now know the gamble paid off. Chrysler has posted its first profit in 15 years; GM is building new American facilities; and plants are operating at a capacity unseen in a long while. General Motors went from the brink of total failure to reclaiming its spot as the world’s top automaker, and as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, “The auto industry hasn’t just turned the corner. It’s starting to accelerate.”

Had it not been for the Obama administration’s policy, these heartening headlines would have been impossible. And yet, Mitt Romney still isn’t happy.

In a new Detroit News op-ed, the former Massachusetts governor says he’s glad the industry still exists, but proceeds to complain anyway about the way in which Obama rescued GM and Chrysler from an imminent collapse.

Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.

Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them…. By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.

It takes a fair amount of chutzpah to face a crisis, get it wrong, then whine about the way in which the other guy got it right.

This is a subject Romney would be better off ignoring. After all, in 2009, he famously urged policymakers to “let Detroit go bankrupt.” Romney was so certain Obama’s policy would fail, he said Americans could “kiss the American automotive industry goodbye” if Obama’s policy moved forward in 2009. Indeed, at the time, Romney called the administration’s plan “tragic” and “a very sad circumstance for this country.” He wrote an April 2009 piece in which he said Obama’s plan “would make GM the living dead.”

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know all of Romney’s warnings were wrong. For him to double down today on the virtues of letting Detroit go bankrupt is just bizarre.

I’m reminded of this clip, which Democrats gleefully put together last summer.

Of particular interest is the last quote in the clip, in which a Chrysler executive responded to a Romney quote by saying, “Whoever told you that is smoking illegal material. That market had become absolutely dysfunctional in 2008 and 2009. There were attempts made by a variety of people to find strategic alliances with other car makers on a global scale and the government stepped in, as the actor of last resort. It had to do it because the consequences would have been just too large to deal with.”

In other words, Romney wasn’t just wrong; he was drug-addled wrong.

To be sure, the former governor wasn’t the only Obama critic whose predictions now look foolish, but Romney is the one who still likes to pretend he was right.

Even the complaints themselves are strange. As Marcy Wheeler explained, Romney’s “basically complaining that the bailout preserved the healthcare a bunch of 55+ year old blue collar workers were promised. He’s pissed they got to keep their healthcare. He’s also complaining that banks took a haircut.”

I haven’t talked to the White House about this, but I suspect if 2012 comes down to a debate over who was right about the auto-industry rescue, Obama likes his chances.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 14, 2012

February 16, 2012 Posted by | Auto Industry, Economic Recovery | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Half-Time In America”: It Isn’t Political, It’s American

Many Republicans want President Obama to fail. That’s  completely understandable and defensible, if one is talking about success or  failure in his re-election campaign. It’s stunning when that’s extended to the  performance of the economy as a whole or any of the nation’s job-supplying  industries.

Thus we have uber-political operative Karl Rove  complaining about how offended he was by a Super Bowl TV ad, sponsored by  Chrysler, which  extolled the recent resurrection of the nation’s auto industry.  The ad  featured tough-guy actor Clint Eastwood talking about the remarkable   comeback of the auto industry, and underscoring the qualities which  truly  characterize the best of America—resilience, optimism, sacrifice,  and hard  work. The script of the commercial, “Halftime in America,” is  as inspiring as  any speech made by an actor in a movie or a political  candidate in a campaign:

It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of  work and they’re  hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to  make a  comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They  almost  lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting   again.

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And,   times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our  heart  at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it  hard to see what  lies ahead.

But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and   acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough  times, and  if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.

All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind?  How do we come together? And, how do we win?

Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them  is true about all of us.

This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right  back  up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our  engines.

Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to  begin.

Really, could anyone have a problem with that ad? It featured   scenes of Detroit, and of middle-class people, working hard in a  struggling  economy and trying to make their city and their lives  better.

Yes, Rove had a problem with it. He said he was “offended” by  the spot, adding on Fox News:

I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an  extremely  well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have   Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his   political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy  corporate  advertising.

Rove seems to be referring to President Obama’s bailout of the  auto  industry, and suggesting that somehow that money was used to pay for a   thinly-disguised campaign ad for the Obama re-election campaign. A lot  of  Republicans were opposed to the bailout, saying the companies should  be subject  to the rules of capitalism. GOP presidential contender Mitt  Romney famously  penned a New York Times op-ed  entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

What is it about Detroit that so many conservatives despise? That   it’s a still-breathing example of the “old economy?” Is it Motown music  they  hate, or the fact that it’s full of labor union members? Is the  distaste for  struggling Detroit so pronounced that people actually want  the city to fail?

Had the auto companies indeed failed despite the bailout, Rove and   Romney would have looked brilliant. But the companies are recovering  nicely,  paying back their loans (with interest), and making profits, in  part because of  concessions made by the labor unions so despised by  conservatives.

There is surely a legitimate philosophical argument to be made  that  the government should not bailout out big businesses (an argument not   often extended to include huge tax breaks for profitable industries).  Pure  capitalism indeed stipulates that businesses should succeed or  fail on their  own. Critics can legitimately argue that government  should not prop up any  industry, no matter what the implications for  employment. They can be angry  that the auto bailouts happened, but it’s  unconscionable to be angry that the  bailouts worked. Comebacks—as the  New York Giants proved, winning the Super  Bowl after an uneven  season—are about as American as it gets.

 

By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 7, 2012

February 7, 2012 Posted by | Auto Industry | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Romney, “Let Detroit Go bankrupt”: Auto-Industry Rescue Paying Dividends

One of the more clear-cut triumphs of President Obama’s first three years has been the success of his auto-industry rescue. Republicans predicted it would fail miserably. They were wrong and the White House was right.

Bloomberg reported this week that auto plants are operating at a capacity unseen in a long while, adding shifts and creating jobs. The Detroit Free Press reported today that GM has reclaimed the crown of world’s largest automaker. And perhaps best of all, Michigan’s unemployment rate has also dropped to its lowest levels since September 2008, buoyed by the auto industry.

It led Jonathan Cohn to report today that while Michigan is still struggling to get on its feet, “recovery clearly seems to be underway” in the state, “most likely because the auto industry is growing again.”

President Obama and his allies will claim credit for this resurgence. They should — and not just for the obvious reasons.

The decision to rescue the Chrysler and General Motors in early 2009 was not popular: The only way to save the industry was to put up federal dollars, something presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney now says he opposed. And that was not what the public, already suffering from “bailout fatigue,” wanted to hear. But the rescue also provoked ambivalence in Michigan. The administration was serious about using the structured bankruptcy to reorganize the companies into leaner, more competitive firms. That meant layoffs and, over the long-term, significantly lower pay for unionized auto workers.

A lot can still go wrong, with the industry and with the economy…. But positive job growth in Michigan is clearly good news — not just for Obama and his allies but also, and more important, for the people of the Midwest.

Remember, dozens of prominent Republican officials, including most of the GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate, as well as the party’s leading presidential candidates, were absolutely certain the rescue would be a disaster. In the midst of an economic crisis, Republicans saw the American automotive industry — one of the central backbones of the nation’s manufacturing sector — teetering on the brink of collapse. The GOP was prepared to simply let it fail, forcing hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment during an already-severe jobs crisis. Mitt Romney’s infamous phrase was, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

What’s more, Republicans were equally certain that Obama’s rescue plan was hopeless. It was a foregone conclusion, they said, since government intervention in the marketplace is always a disaster. Romney called the administration’s plan “tragic” at the time.

Except they were wrong — about literally every aspect of the debate.

 

By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 19, 2012

January 20, 2012 Posted by | Auto Industry | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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