Bail out the auto industry

When I was growing up my mother belonged to an investment club. Every week the ladies would gather and invest $10. In between meetings they would do their stock market research and carefully watch how their money was doing. In that far away place and time, before opportunities opened for women in the workplace, the ladies would also pay careful attention when their husbands talked about stocks. The idea was to make some money.

Most of all, they loved investing in blue-chip stocks in general, and General Motors and Ford in particular. It wasn't just the money – every time they bought a share they felt like they were buying part of America. It seemed patriotic. Looking back on it, and how much my mother and her friends loved this country, I must say that it was a patriotic act.

If my mother were alive today she would have been shocked by last week's Capitol Hill hearings. She would have recalled that the Detroit whose auto museums we used to visit (a three-hour drive from my hometown Cleveland) was peopled by industrious workers, great management and the promise of America. These were the men (and women) who built the tanks and the trucks that won World War II and who kept supplying our country's defense needs right through the Cold War.
But last week in Congress was a humiliating spectacle. The three fat-cat CEOs, so politically tone deaf that they each flew in on separate corporate jets, testified about their troubles. It was a poster-sized moment of our country's sad decline as a manufacturing power. And it was a moment that I never would have believed could happen.

But it did happen. The sheer stupidity of Detroit's management lo these 40 years has also happened. The public's understandable temptation is to wish a pox on all their houses and let them go bankrupt. I have also had those thoughts. And the truth is nonpartisan, for there is plenty of blame to go around. Was the UAW too greedy for too long? Has management been bloated, greedy and completely lacking vision while being outdone by our foreign competitors? The answer to both questions is yes, of course.

And yet, and yet and yet … I've also had to grow up and face another hard truth: These companies cannot be allowed to go bankrupt, period. Here's why:
We have allowed our manufacturing base to go overseas and with it, our national security. Suppose we ever got into a major land war elsewhere. Who will manufacture our tanks and trucks now? Our international rivals? Perhaps the countries we are fighting?
During World War II and Korea, our auto plants turned on a dime and cranked out war machines by the tens of thousands. Then we had the capacity to make what we needed to win the war. If American auto manufacturing is owned by the likes of Honda, we will no longer own and control the necessary means of production to protect ourselves.

Many automobile workers have worked for decades on assembly lines, not exactly a fun-filled job. Those assembly lines put generations of kids through college, bought houses, supported our larger economy. And the people – we shouldn't call them simply workers, because for many Americans, they are our grandparents and parents – expected health care and some retirement in exchange for long, tough hours. And here's another truth: If Detroit doesn't provide for these folks, the taxpayers must. Better to leave the Big Three in business than overburden our already overburdened doles.
There's also a question of double standards. Do we bail out the white-collar schnooks at AIG (and the like) whose stupid executives are still taking luxury retreats on the taxpayers' dime and not do right by our own Detroit workers? That's not fair. And in the world's eyes, the Big Three are so connected to American wellbeing that if they are allowed to fail, the effects on the dollar and U.S. standing in the global economy could be catastrophic.

Read me straight, here – there should be no blank checks. There must be management and union accountability here, and that means concessions from everyone: the fat cat boss, the current workers and the retirees. Some plants may have to be closed, and there must also be political accountability – just like closing military bases, we must avoid the "not in my state" congressional mentality. An up or down vote on a comprehensive plan is a prerequisite.

We need some economy of scale here and more green cars rather than making tens and tens of different models, all guzzling gas. There must be a plan for profitability.
All of this is possible. Perhaps the first project of President-elect Obama will be to unite the country around saving this critical industry. American blue chips have recently turned rusty brown. It's time to make them blue again.