Word: auto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...convenient American stereotype: Detroit makes cars, Dixie races them. But as the entire tortured debate in Washington over whether to bail out the ailing U.S. auto industry has shown, that distinction is as tired and broken as the Big Three's business models. In fact, the political game of chicken that ended Friday with President Bush announcing a temporary $17 billion aid package for GM and Chrysler to stave off the immediate threat of bankruptcy has shown the rest of the country what the South has known for years: led by foreign carmakers like Toyota and Mercedes-Benz, Dixie...
...auto companies then did their part, with Chrysler recently announcing it would shut down operations for a full month, raising the threat of catastrophic liquidation if someone in Washington didn't cough up some money. Bush's hand was forced. In theory, the job of saving the car companies would have gone to the Commerce Department, but its chief, Carlos Gutierrez, doesn't have access to the kind of money Detroit needs, so Bush gave the job to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson...
...many regards it just passes the buck to Obama. To be fair, Treasury had but a week to address an incredibly complex problem and come up with a multibillion-dollar aid package - no small achievement, however lacking in teeth. (Read "In the Nick of Time: Bush Announces Auto Bailout...
There is another story in all this, of course. President Bush is approaching Hoover-Buchanan levels of end-of-office ignominy. His evident discomfort at unveiling the auto plan Friday morning comes, in part, from the ideological anomie he feels at the massive government intervention in a once major part of the American economy. But what must hurt even more for Bush - who has always had a keen sense of political reality, whatever his other shortcomings - is the self-image of a President stepping before the podium in his last days to announce a stopgap rescue for two giant, collapsing...
Still, as the confidence began returning to Detroit, President-elect Barack Obama was at a press conference issuing a sober reminder. Auto industry leaders, he said, should take note "that the American people's patience is running out," and that Detroit must seize on this opportunity and make tough reforms...