Can Hope change a spark plug?

Last month, America cast a vote to feel better about itself. Much as I had predicted in July , in the absence of a well reasoned economic alternative from the McCain campaign the voters would revert to casting a vote that would expunge the Bush years. http://www.thenextright.com/ironman/not-so-happy-motoring-a-challenge-for-mccains-michigan-ohio-strategy

I do not need to link to every quote where someone has said how good the Obama win made them feel about themselves, or their country.  It's like the entire clientele of Whole Foods Market has obtained validation that those crass, bellicose Republicans have lost.

But in the end, this is all ephemrical feelgood nonsense. We elected a Gatsby candidate http://www.thenextright.com/ironman/the-gatsby-candidates who now must enact real policies that do real things, which his resume offers scant evidence of.

Indeed, the election of Obama reminds me of this scene from the movie Dave, where the stand-in President is looking for money for a homeless program and inquires why the government is spending lavishly on making existing car owners feel better about their cars.

 Dave: I don't want to tell some eight-year-old kid he's gotta sleep in the street because we want people to feel better about their *car*. Do *you* want to tell them that?
Secretary of Commerce: [quietly] No sir.
[sits back in his seat and reflects]
Secretary of Commerce: No I sure don't

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106673/quotes

Well, the Obama Presidency may prove to be a multitrillion dollar effort in making people feel better about themselves. Whether it accomplishes anything useful for non-idealogues will probably be answered in how it handles the auto bailout.

It appears likely that the Bush adminstration and Congress have agreed on floating the car firms enough money to get into Barack's term  http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0646586520081206?rpc=44. I'm actually OK with this. Much as I had to drop well over a thousand this morning to keep the wife's jalopy on the road, we probably need to do this.   Better quick and incomplete than to allow these firms to sink deeper.

There's no time to figure out a comprehensive recovery plan and hardly any money after the $700 Billion TARP program is funded.  And for those convinced the Detroit Three are on their way inevitably to the Wilmington bankruptcy court; well, it might be better if they filed when the rest of the economy was a little more robust. Much as I would rather buy a new car along with the wife when things settle down a bit 

The problem is long term the Democratic Party has identified three mutually exclusive requirements for a auto bailout.

a) Protect taxpayers by making sure the firms return to profitability and pay back the loan.

b) Protect organized labor by limiting concessions and maintaining as much employment as possible.

c) Advance the environmental agenda by promoting electric cars.

I presume everyone here would favor a). But you can't get there when there's going to be labor efforts to keep plants open and compensation high, especially when even before the credit crisis there were too many car firms and too many car plants http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070307/AUTO04/703070363/1148/AUTO01

I would suggest those who foresee Detroit moving seamlessly to green cars consider how hard Toyota had to work to deliver a hybrid to market  http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/17/news/companies/mostadmired_fortune_toyota/index.htmEvidently Toyota is now hoping to get the Priius profit margin up to that of the Corolla. Maybe. Notice the ubitiquous incentives behind sales of this car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius#Government_incentives. Toyota is hoping to sell 200,000 Priuses per year in the U.S.;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius#Sales. By comparison, the Chevrolet Silverado pickup still sells twice that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Silverado.

Now, does anyone think such brilliant economic minds like Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and Chris Dodd are going to take economically prudent steps to revive the auto industry, or are they going to "save the planet" by sacrificing the taxpayer.

I suspect that in a couple of years when highly profitable Tundras are flying off the Toyota lots a lot of Japanese businessmen will be saying Domo Arigato  to the D.C. Democrats.

I also suspect that we will be all made to feel good about the American car industry by the DC Democrats, but much as British Leyland proved an expensive and futile effort in corporate socialism for the UK  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland, the new world of domestic car manufacturing will prove politically correct and financially unsustainable.