In Lansing today, Mitt Romney explained that he was very sad that Oldsmobile is no longer around to employ people.
MLive: Now the presumptive nominee, Romney is in the Midwest stressing economic issues, with a stop at Lansing Community College.
Romney noted the demise of Oldsmobile in Lansing, and the problems that has caused for working families.
"Americans are tired of living on the edge, and about what kind of country they'd leave their country," he said, calling Obama's tenure "a catastrophe."
Oldsmobile, you will remember, went defunct in 2004 after several years of making unremarkable largely aimed at an older demographic. The General Motors brand’s demise was, in many way, a canary in the coal mine for the domestic automobile industry.
When Ford and later GM and Chrysler were forced to go through painful restructuring to survive almost everyone agreed—Mitt Romney included—that the Big Three had to get leaner. That meant shedding brands.
A few years earlier, Chrysler killed Plymouth. Ford ditched Mercury. During bankruptcy GM sent Saturn, Pontiac, Saab, and Hummer to same .
Yes, restructuring and bankruptcy greatly reduced the Big Three’s size and it meant a lot of jobs were lost. That’s unfortunate, but it was also a painful sacrifice necessary to ensure the Detroit automakers could continue as profitable, job-creating enterprises over the long haul.
It’s weird, most of the time Mitt Romney likes to present himself as this capitalist’s capitalist who embraces “creative destruction” within the marketplace. But every so often he swings through the rust belt and laments things like the eight-year-old demise of a company that produced maybe one memorable car (the Aurua) in my lifetime.
Letting Detroit go bankrupt probably would have been a bad idea, but letting Oldsmobile, like so much of its target market, depart this vale wasn’t a tragedy. It was exactly what should happen when a business loses touch with the market. -- JTW
