For weeks, national, state and local politicians have been beating each other up over what happened to New Orleans. Mostly, the arguments are about whether they should have expected a disaster. Should they have realized the levees would break? Should they have had an evacuation plan? When Hurricane Katrina struck, who should have been responsible for what?
I don’t know the answers. I do know that the Delphi corporation’s bankruptcy was exactly as surprising as snow in January. This had been coming for months. Make that, years.
Everyone who knew anything about it knew things couldn’t go on the way they have been. But nobody wanted to be the first to demand we get serious about reform.
The auto industry has been operating under a 1957 business model, and the United Auto Workers are fully ready to meet the challenges of 1937. Last week, they were hit in the face by the new century. General Motors, meet globalization. Bam.
George Romney was one of the best-known governors in Michigan history. Before that, he ran the American Motors Corporation. He became famous in the 1950s for promoting a small, fuel efficient car – the Rambler. And for saying the day would come when we could no longer afford the “gas-guzzling dinosaurs” the Big Three specialized in making.
Romney died ten years ago. Not long before that, he told me that he and Walter Reuther, the great labor leader, used to have clandestine lunches back in the 1950s.
Someday, they both agreed, the pattern of endlessly raising pay and benefits and passing it on in higher prices to the consumers would no longer work. But neither man felt they could sell that to their constituents, and they didn’t even try.
We just had the first major earthquake that will reshape Michigan’s future. Lots more are coming, and we need leaders who will help us make and accept the hard choices we have to make.
Unfortunately, leaders seem as scarce today as dry land in a hurricane. When the next election comes, let’s send out a search party.
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