Will takes on Obama and the Government Motors deal here

“What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is
running GM,” says the president who, when not firing GM’s CEO, purging
its board of directors and picking new members, is designing new
products (imposing fuel economy requirements that will control size,
weight, passenger capacity and safety). The president, overcoming his
professed reluctance to run GM, resembles the journalist Don Marquis
when, after a month on the wagon, he ordered a double martini and
exclaimed: “I’ve conquered my goddam willpower.”

Yet Steve Rattner and Ron Bloom, two of the president’s fixers of
Detroit, recently wrote in USA Today that government “will play no
role” in running GM. They were not under oath.

But one reason Amtrak runs on red ink is that legislators treat it as
their toy train set, preventing it from cutting egregiously
unprofitable routes. Will Congress passively accept auto plant-closing
decisions? Rattner says Washington’s demure vow is: “No plant
decisions, no dealer decisions, no color-of-the-car decisions.” He is
one-third right.

Last week, under the headline “Senators Blast
Automakers Over Dealer Closings,” The Washington Post reported,
“Because the federal government is slated to own most of General Motors
and 8 percent of Chrysler, some of the senators said they have a
responsibility, as major shareholders do, to review company decisions.”

“Too big to fail” really means that if GM fails, Democrats will lose too many votes in 2010 and too many electoral college votes in 2012.