Ed Is Being Just a Bit Harsh, Here.
June 1, 2009
Also, he hasn’t thought this through: if Obama picked experienced people for his automotive task force, how would that make him look, by comparison?
Also, if we’d been to business school ourselves, we’d see the wisdom in how this is being handled. Or something.
Imagine you had to pick someone to shepherd a gigantic multinational corporation through a bankruptcy in order to salvage it. Would you look for someone with extensive experience in the firm’s industry, or would you prefer someone with demonstrated savvy on Wall Street in turning around troubled firms? If the firm made cars, perhaps you could think of it as a choice between a Lee Iacocca or a Mitt Romney.
Or, maybe, you’d just pick someone from the mail room, as Barack Obama apparently has in the GM bankruptcy:
It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.
But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.
Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.
“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”
Scary? Well, yes, and not just for Mr. Deese, whose executive experience actually is less than Obama’s. He’s never run any business, let alone worked in the auto industry. He joined the Hillary Clinton campaign by taking a hiatus from law school, which he began after working as an assistant to Gene Sperling, now an advisor to Tim Geithner. His entire resume consists of campaign work.
Well. Maybe that gives him a fresh perspective on what kinds of cars they should make for people to not-buy. Do people want to not-buy midsize sedans, light trucks or SUVs, or small cars?
In other news, the team that has been putting the Chevy Volt together is putting together a mass suicide pact, but cannot get the UAW to sign off on it . . .
O’Rourke wept.
Posted in Americana, Around the 'Sphere, Automotive, Business & Management, Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep, Cultured, Like Yogurt, Drive-By Media, Economics, Energy Policy, Industries, Media, National Debt, Obama Administration, Transportation, new media, politics
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June 1st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
He sounds just like Clinton’s head of White House security, Craig Livingstone who also was a long-time Democratic campaign worker and wore the “Chicken George” suit when he followed around George H.W. Bush on the campaign trail. He the guy that secured the nearly 1000 personnel files of Repubs for either– Hillary’s enemies list, or no apparent reason, depending on who you ask. These young ‘Turks” usually work out so well. Like Lenin’s aides. The ones that took Russia from the breadbasket of Europe to a Soviet Union begging bread scraps. It wasn’t that they were young and stupid, mind you. Just stupid. I’m sure Brian Deese once looked under the hood of a car. And I bet he can recite Saul Alinsky’s rules by heart. He certainly can fire dealers off an enemies list. What else do you need? Experience is over-rated.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:31 am
Probably never picked up a wrench in his life. That is if he even knows what hand and air tools are. Doesn’t have any concept of methods planning. That is the hwo to put this together in the correct manner. But the UAW will help him out, won’t they?