OPINION: Obama, GM's CEO
The right loves big business. The left loves big government. Business and government have merged, and neither the left nor the right can tell them apart.
So it's logical that wise conservative talk radio hosts went berserk Monday after learning that President Barack Obama had fired General Motors chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. They immediately defended Wagoner, as if he were a legitimate captain of industry worthy of independence from government control. They acted as if his firing were the end of freedom and capitalism as we know it, with the full-fledged onslaught of economic socialism upon us this week. They had a point, but their blame was misplaced.
For all intents and purposes, the president of the United States serves today as the chairman and CEO of General Motors. For that matter, he's chairman and CEO of Chrysler and the nation's largest banks. He and his predecessor bought them by indebting generations to come. Our country has never been down this path.
Anyone who doesn't grasp the fact that Obama is the CEO of Chrysler should consider his statement Monday, in which he told Americans the government would guarantee their drive trains.
"Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty."
The destruction of free market capitalism, as we've known it throughout this country's history, isn't the work of a president who woke up and decided to fire a CEO and promise car repairs. That type of action has been foreseeable for months, and the practice has only begun. Soon, President Obama may decide who makes what, who sells what, who gets a loan, and how much employees of a federalized company earn.
Quick destruction of our free market began with the sale of private industry to government. Of all people, conservative talk radio hosts should understand the buyer of a business controls it. And who is mostly responsible for a sale, the buyer or the seller? It's the seller.
Buyers always have limits, meaning sellers control their own fates. Some say "everything is for sale, if the price is right." But that's a myth. One can place grandma's wedding ring in a safe and pledge never to sell it no matter what. One can refuse any offer to have sex for cash. One can refuse any offer by retaining a damn-the-consequences conviction, even if the ramifications are starvation and death.
Death, if necessary, is what any self-respecting CEO should choose, to avoid selling a private corporation to government. Not personal suicide, but death of the company.
Before choosing corporate death, Wagoner and his board should have tried bankruptcy.
That would have allowed GM to stiff the United Auto Workers Union, which has put American auto companies at a disadvantage for decades by demanding and receiving outrageous compensation packages. In addition to wages that foreign competitors on American soil don't match, the union has demanded lifelong pensions in which former employees are paid for decades more than they produced. It's a business model destined to fail.
When bankruptcy can't save a helpless company, captains of industry should do as captains of sinking ships. They should go down with honor. Sure, it would be a tremendous hardship for the GM's 266,000 employees and their families. Certainly, that many lost jobs would badly hurt the entire country. But the short term pain would lead to recovery, with some other company emerging from the ashes to fill whatever market void might exist. The short term pain would be far less a burden than the long-term pain and ultimate fate of an underperforming, unsustainable behemoth funded by taxpayers and managed by a community organizer who served a short stint in the Senate, taught law school part time, and has never managed a business.
Failure, and all that go with it, are integral to free-market capitalism and our way of life.Failure is what has freed us from underperforming businesses overburdened by unworkable overhead. Failure of Company A has always led to the emergence of Company B.
Don't blame President Obama for deciding to steer the ship we call General Motors. He's the professed liberal we elected after he promised to give us even more big government than former president George W. Bush left behind. No, don't blame Obama for taking command of a ship he was invited to save with big government solutions. Blame those who didn't have the strength of character to go down with their ship after risking its fate in troubled waters.
