In the Obamaian version of the game, an inexperienced manager, a rookie President, puts three industry veterans (this season, featuring the auto industry) into a competition for taxpayer money for survival so they can build the kinds of cars Obama wants them to make. The first competition was a song-and-dance routine in front of Congress. But they flunked Obama's Fundamentals of Symbolism course by taking company planes to the event (but who could blame them? I mean, are you sure an American-built car can make it to DC from Detroit without breaking down?) Nancy Pelosi was beside herself; her military-flown flights home don't have the same perks. Ford decided government meddling in its business affairs wasn't worth it and dropped out of the competition.
The second competition was "Obama Says". This is the Democratic Party's version of the childhood game "Simon Says". In this version of the game, each time Obama tells you to do something, you have to do it, of course. But the House Democrats can also decide ex post facto what Obama said, no matter what the rules were when the competition started.
The latest competition was a challenge: given the world's highest autoworker compensation rates, how many vehicles can you sell with the President talking down the economy, criticizing the vehicles you're selling and consumer credit only beginning to thaw? The results were in this past weekend: Obama told CEO Rick Waggoner of GM, "You're fired!" After irresponsibly stoking populist outrage with class warfare arguments and over the AIG retention bonuses, Obama needed a fall guy.
President Obama solemnly assured Americans, in the aftermath of Waggoner's termination: "The United States government has no interest or intention of running GM." Are you kidding me? Obama protests too much. He's made it clear: "We cannot, we must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish." "Too big to fail" GM. In fact, he's picking winners and losers: he's let Ford's competitors have billions of taxpayer money andis willing to guarantee the American taxpayer will stand behind new car warranties. He's stalling bankruptcy, although a surgical bankruptcy (meaning an Obama-controlled process) is now a possibility. He also has conflicting objectives; for example, GM is not a leader for fuel-efficient vehicles, its most popular and profitable vehicles are trucks and SUV's, and Obama's task force complains GM management is glacially slow, but Obama insists America will be the global leader in clean car technology and wants to subsidize their purchase.
