It's not hate, it's something else

Tue, 11/18/2008 - 9:42am
Michelle Maynard has a front-pager in the New York Times on the declining clout of Detroit: 
Thus far, much of the commentary in Washington, in the pages of major newspapers and on the Web, has been against providing financial support for the companies, which they will say they desperately need in hearings beginning on Tuesday. The waves of criticism have been so strong that Susan Tompor, a columnist for The Detroit Free Press, was moved to write on Sunday’s front page: “I never knew Detroit was a dirty word.” It is a remarkable shift for an industry that has long wielded considerable clout in Washington. But that support has dwindled for many reasons, leaving backers of a bailout, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, having a tough time making their case that Detroit should be saved. So how did the famous 1953 quotation from the former General Motors president Charles E. Wilson — that what was good for our country was good for G.M., and vice versa — become a dated notion to so many people?
Maynard provides a bunch of reasons that boil down to resentment at management's ineptitude and the UAW's cushy and bloated Job Bank system.  Columnists are quoted saying the rest of America hates Detroit.  I don't doubt that these factors play something of a role.  But I do think there's a more basic trend at work -- domestic-based auto manufacturers simply employ far fewer people than in the past, while foreign-based auto manufacturers employ far more than in the past.  As a result, Detroit commands far less political support than in the past.  It's not hate -- it's that Detroit's Big Three, while still important, are not nearly as important as they used to be. 
Daniel W. Drezner | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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A few things: 1. It's hard

by Foobarista (not verified) on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 6:24pm

A few things:

1. It's hard to get excited about someone else's pension if you don't get one yourself. Same with healthcare. Or even one's company going broke - it's happened to me three times in the past ten years.

It's bad enough that my taxes finance cushy pensions for bureaucrats, while nobody's going to bail out my 401K. I'll be damned if I'm going to be happy to subsidize private-sector pensions with my taxes that I didn't at least implicitly agree to by voting.

2. Detroit is seen as something who's time has gone. Even though there are lots of innovations in car tech these days, Detroit is as often as not in the way. And it hasn't helped that Detroit whines consistently about CAFE, etc. For many people, Detroit brands are as toxic as Big Oil or Big Tobacco.

3. There are at least as many Honda or Toyota families as there were Chevy or Ford families 30 years ago. They don't have positive emotional connections to Detroit, and may have bad memories of crappy 1970s and 1980s cars that turned their parents against the Big 3 to begin with.

Also, the dealer network doesn't help. The main human interface between car companies and buyers are the dealers. I've been to some non-wonderful Honda dealers, but American car dealers seem particularly unpleasant.