A Detroiter in his own mind

By R.M. | WASHINGTON, DC

ONE of Mitt Romney's problems is that he lays it on too thick. He's not just a conservative, he's a "severe conservative". He feels your pain because he too is "unemployed". And he understands America's car industry because he's a Tigers-cheering motorhead, a true "son of Detroit".

That last assertion comes in an op-ed Mr Romney wrote for the Detroit News today. And it's not untrue, per se. The candidate was born in Detroit, though he grew up in Bloomfield Hills, one of America's wealthiest cities. He probably cheered for the Tigers as a kid, but his position has since evolved. And cars may really be "in my bones", as he claims, but he advocated letting Detroit go bankrupt in 2008.

The purpose of Mr Romney's op-ed is to clarify his position on the auto bail-out ahead of Michigan's primary on February 28th. And the piece rivals Cirque du Soleil in its display of contortions. Mr Romney seems loth to gush about the success of the bail-out, noting only the good news that "Chrysler and General Motors are still in business". He certainly doesn't mention that 2011 was the best year for America's carmakers since the financial crisis, with each of the big three turning a solid profit. But he does imply that this achievement is a result of his own advice. "The course I recommended was eventually followed", Mr Romney writes.

As with much of Mr Romney's excessive rhetoric, there is some truth to this statement. Following the bail-outs, the president eventually forced Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy, a step Mr Romney thought should occur naturally. And the government oversaw painful restructurings at both companies, which were largely in line with Mr Romney's broad suggestions. But the course Mr Romney recommended in 2008 began with the government stepping back, and it is unlikely things would've turned out so well had this happened.

Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position. "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.

In other areas of his op-ed Mr Romney is more accurate. Unions did win some special favours in the bail-out deals, though they are not as egregious as the candidate claims. For example, a health fund for retired workers was unfairly favoured over secured bondholders at Chrysler. But an issue like that is unlikely to resonate in Detroit. So Mr Romney must find a way to re-write history, lest he fall further behind Rick Santorum in his state of birth. Mr Santorum didn't support the auto bail-out either, but he evinces a genuine compassion for blue-collar workers. And he didn't pen an op-ed predicting, "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." That's a difficult statement to walk back.

(Photo credit: AFP)