Chrysler’s CEO Barack Obama Made Decision to Cut Dealers

President Obama cut the Chrysler dealer network, according to a report by Reuters on Tuesday. The general belief has been that this was a business decision made by Chrysler executives. But according to the lawyer representing some of the closed dealers, the President’s automotive task force pressured Chrysler execs to make the cuts.

Then Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto pointed out that at least one blogger, Doug Ross, has found through a detailed review of dealer owners and their political campaign donations that almost all the dealers losing their dealerships are Republican contributors.

I initially dismissed these stories, assuming that there was some other factor at play here, perhaps a majority of car dealers are Republicans or maybe rural car dealers are Republicans. Unfortunately the facts got in the way of that easy answer.

Ross’ story also points out that some of the dealers to be cut do not appear to have been in the bottom 25% of performers, or fit the other criteria supposedly used. And, Chrysler is reported to be looking for dealers to fill in the holes left by dealers that were cut.

What does this mean to the political philosophy and principles of Mind Your Own Damn Business Politics that I write about every day? Why should readers of this blog care?

My first thought is that we shouldn’t care. My readers look at the facts. They dig into important stories and develop informed opinions and enter into intelligent, fact based debates. You, readers, don’t just glance at headlines and form emotional opinions that you hold to despite better info (as do about 98% of Americans). You recognize that realistically, the idea that Obama’s automotive task force would approach the dealer cuts with so blatant a political agenda is ludicrous. Such actions would be morally repugnant and illegal in so many ways they would almost make a Chicago politician blush. MYODB Politics is about facts and truth and since this can’t be true we can’t be interested.

Except that the data makes this story look ugly. Attorneys are gathering facts and legal actions are coming because there are serious questions as to how the criterion Chrysler claims to have used to identify the dealers aligns with the actual cuts made. And because it looks ugly it will be a moral stain on this President, if not a serious legal problem, that could have and should have been avoided. Our nation is based on Separation of Powers and that separation goes beyond the separation of Federal from the states (which has become blurred) and separation of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches (also blurred). We separate the political from the economic (again, blurred), as I explained last week in President or King? Oval Office or Throne Room?

Had this President attempted to uphold what remains of that separation of powers we would not be looking at this mess, nor would we have spent billions to save companies with unworkable business models in a very selfish attempt to avoid pain now by offering our children’s future as collateral to the Chinese.

I know, it’s only the Constitution, but I like it.

Tagged as: bailout, chrysler, chrysler bankruptcy, chrysler dealer closing, chrysler dealership closing, economic crisis, economy, GM bankruptcy, GM dealer closing, gm dealership closing