The End of the Affair

The inevitable finally happened yesterday. “General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection Monday as part of the Obama administration's plan to shrink the automaker to a sustainable size and give a majority ownership stake to the federal government. GM's bankruptcy filing is the fourth-largest in U.S. history and the largest for an industrial company. The company said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets.” 172 billion in debt. Holy smackdown, Batman. Sad thing is that they were going backwards, too.

There were a lot of folks scratching their heads about the implications of this. Can the government really run a car manufacturer? What I seem to recall when this option was first being discussed is that it would be a "temporary" takeover till the automaker got on its feet again. What waits to be seen is exactly how temporary this will be.

I suppose they'll re-tool now to make earth friendlier vehicles that ivory tower types will say are good for us. Then they will pass laws that make it hard for us to afford the vehicles we currently drive. Those new cars won't be cheap, but they will be good for us.

Actually, I'm not going to predict tomorrow on this one. Instead I'll simply watch from the bleachers. With skepticism. All I know is that I'm glad I don't have to hold the reins. I don't want to be responsible.

This weekend, P.J. O'Rourke published a poignant piece of entertaining commentary on the matter which appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I want to apologize for any few cheap shots I took at O'Rourke on The Wealth of Nations in my essay Wooden Teeth & Romantic Scandals last Friday. Truthfully, I have enjoyed (from time to time when I stumble upon it) O'Rourke's incisive wit over the years and his essay The End of the Affair in the WSJ shows why.

The phrase “bankrupt General Motors,” which we expect to hear uttered on Monday, leaves Americans my age in economic shock. The words are as melodramatic as “Mom’s nude photos.” And, indeed, if we want to understand what doomed the American automobile, we should give up on economics and turn to melodrama.

Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses.

It's an essay I recommend vigorously.

I especially like the title of the essay, with its reference to Graham Greene's novel of the same. Greene's is, of course, about an affair between a man and a woman. Greene writes the book from the point of view of a man who is clueless so that the reader understands what the writer does not.

Truth is, anyone half paying attention could see that GM was on a doomed ride. But I doubt they could have predicted it would end this way.