As Americans made their shopping rounds this Christmas, a weird sight cropped up for them at retailers. 40- and 60-watt light bulbs were on fire sale. These would be the incandescent kind, the ones that Thomas Edison invented. In the new year, a government mandate kicks in requiring people to buy different kinds of light bulbs, not the incandescent kind. These bulbs happen to price out about triple what we’ve always paid.
You remember the light bulb mandate from a few years ago. Do you recall that it was a Christmas present? Passed by Congress as it was in December of the year (2007), how could one not make the association. The corporate stooge who ran the Sierra Club at the time said of the thing, “This bill is a huge Christmas present to…hardworking American families.”
In December 2009, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was going on in a similar vein. “I’m confident, I’m hopeful that we will have a bill as a Christmas present to the American people,” she chirped, as Congress debated an early version of Obamacare.
And finally there is that old favorite, the auto bailout. We are now upon its five-year anniversary. Lest anyone forget, the untold billions poured into Detroit’s Big Three (or at the minimum General Motors and Chrysler; Ford only got “loan guarantees”) beginning in December 2008 came under the sign of a Christmas present.
All the politicians justified it that way. As Peter Baker reports in his new book on the George W. Bush presidency, Days of Fire, at the White House holiday party that year, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten raised a glass and announced, “And this year, Mr. President, we chipped in and we bought you Chrysler.”
Chrysler—how’d that work out? Here is Consumer Reports’ New Car Ratings & Reviews of December 2013 on that company’s marks: “The [Dodge] Avenger, like the related Chrysler 200, is an outdated and outclassed design that is uncompetitive among family sedans.”
Once upon a time, Chrysler invented the minivan. Five years into the bailout: “The Town & Country still falls short of the best minivans….Reliability has been well below average.” Turning to the crossover, “Despite the new engine and updated interior appointments, the Journey is still mediocre overall.”
Consumer Reports competes with The Ultimate New Car Guide. Yet its 2014 edition gives more of the same. “The Dodge Avenger dates back to the bad old days at the Chrysler Corporation, before the bankruptcy….No amount of optional equipment can lift the Avenger up to the high level of its competition,” namely “a Toyota Camry or a Honda Accord.”
Watch out when the Japanese cars are reviewed five years after Christmas 2008.
“The well-rounded Accord is our top-rated affordable family sedan….Handling is quite agile and secure, and the ride is supple and controlled” (Consumer Reports). “The standard of reference among American-style sedans has long been the Toyota Camry….It is a tribute to the Camry’s reputation for quality and reliability that it continues to outsell each and every one of [the] leaders in this class” (Ultimate New Car Guide).
It is perfectly fair to say that the Chrysler bailout has developed, five years on, into the pathetic joke that it was always fated to be. Here is a company that does not belong in the car business, a business in which it only plumbs new depths of failure. Yet the government enabled Chrysler to keep on keeping on.
As for General Motors, the last word has been spoken already, by Forbes.com’s own Louis Woodhill. As Woodhill’s classic 2012 article, “General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy—Again,” began: “President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again.”
Woodhill’s point was that companies like Volkswagen were so badly out-engineering GM four years after the bailout that it wasn’t a fair fight anymore. GM big wheel Bob Lutz tried to parry Woodhill, while Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal spoke the truth when he said that Woodhill’s post incited “one of those kerfuffles that render the Web a net plus.”
The thing about gift-giving at Christmastime is that the proper present is supposed to make the recipient better. A little more comfortable, productive, indulgent, thankful, solicitous, whatever. Which would be quite the opposite of what has happened to the car-makers thanks to the feds’ disposal of the billions. Only the dipsticks in the government could turn a venerable holiday tradition into a laughingstock.