IS RICK WAGONER WASHED UP AT GM?

[Get the latest "Truth With Speedzzter" here]

It looks like Congress will adjourn for 2008 without doing anything to douse the economic firestorm that is consuming what's left of General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler.

Monday, November 17, 2008, the New York Times asserted that:

"DETROIT — Rick Wagoner cannot afford to leave Washington this week without at least $10 billion in federal aid to keep General Motors in business."


"Rick Wagoner, G.M.'s chief for the last eight years, has to convince Congress that the automakers need federal loans."

"But a major question for Mr. Wagoner, G.M.’s chief executive for the last eight years, is whether he will return to Detroit with his job as well."

Wagoner jetted into town on a "luxury corporate jet," got brutally punished in a sadly typical U.S. Senate "show trial" "photo op" joke of a "hearing," and did not even obtain so much as cab fare for GM.

Wagoner failed to "circle the wagons" when it mattered most. Now GM will be forced to either file for bankruptcy or go into a "starvation mode" in order to hang on until President-Elect Obama and a larger Democratic majority takes over in late January 2009.

This will likely be the longest sixty days of Rick Wagoner's life.

However the inescapable question is: Will Wagoner even survive that long as GM's CEO? Or was Wagoner's infamous begging trip to Washington D.C. in the GM executive jet one of his last?

Wagoner basically has put all of his clout and reputation on the line. His "bet" came up empty. He struck out in the bottom of the ninth with the whole World Series on the line. He missed the "Hail Mary" shot at the buzzer that would have prevented a certain loss and put the contest into overtime.

Moreover, some have undoubtedly concluded that how he has mishandled this has actually HURT GM's cause. A near universal chorus in the halls of Congress and the lazy, sycophantic media is that GM's management is to blame for the crisis. And that "buck" stops with the guy who failed to "close the sale" by not bringing home the bucks this week.

High-profile management upheaval will likely be necessary window-dressing to any future deal as well.

Wagoner is the last of the traditional "Detroit insider" CEOs. The popular canard that it will take brilliant folks who have not grown up in inside the auto industry to save it is a career-flattening steamroller for company men like Wagoner.

He may not have made the mess and he may have been fighting for restructuring long before anyone in Congress ever even heard of the concept, but he's most likely to take the fall for generations of GM managers that are long gone.

It maybe totally unfair and divorced from the actual facts, but Wagoner might just be one of the sacrificial lambs in the titanic struggle to save GM.

Of course, Mitt Romney is tuning up in the green room . . . .