Given the way commentators of every stripe criticize and even mock Obama these days, you could be forgiven for not recalling that these are the same commentators who hailed him as a proverbial Messiah on his way to becoming the first Black president of the United States.
But here’s how I pooh-poohed the unbridled celebration that attended his march to the White House:
This financial crisis is bound to hasten the demise of America as the world’s sole economic superpower… But am I the only one who finds it fateful that clueless (White) folks in Washington and on Wall Street are doing all they can to turn this country into a bankrupt banana republic just as voters are poised to elect the first Black president of the United States…?
(“Nutjob Republicans…Defeat Bailout Bill,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 1, 2008)
Of course, Obama also inherited two unwinnable wars which, combined with the global financial mess he inherited, must have made him feel not like the most powerful man but like the biggest fall guy in the world.
Even so, apropos of feeling more like fall guy than commander in chief, Obama has nothing on GM’s new CEO Mary Barra.
No doubt you recall that, just months ago, commentators of every stripe were hailing her for becoming the first female CEO of a Big Three automotive company. The consensus was that, in doing so, she had broken a glass ceiling so high that the only one higher is that which has prevented a woman from becoming president of the United States.
Well, how’s this for pooh-poohing what should still be the honeymoon period of her tenure:
General Motors Co CEO Mary Barra on Tuesday called her company’s slow response to at least 13 deaths linked to faulty ignition switches ‘unacceptable,’ but could not give U.S. lawmakers many answers as to what went wrong as she pointed to an ongoing internal investigation…
Representative Henry Waxman, a veteran Democrat who has spearheaded past attempts to tighten U.S. laws on automotive safety, bluntly told Barra: ‘Because GM didn’t implement this simple fix when it learned about the problem, at least a dozen people have died in defective GM vehicles.’
GM first learned of a problem with its ignition switches on Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other models in 2001, documents have shown, but took no steps to recall any cars until this past February.
(Reuters, April 1, 2014)
Barra looked like a cross between a human piñata and a deer caught in the headlights as congressmen grilled her to explain why the rogues gallery of White guys who preceded her made the unconscionable decision to forego fixing this problem because they deemed the cost of 57 cents per ignition “too high.” The only thing worse would’ve been if cigarette peddler Philip Morris had made a public show of replacing its male CEO with a female – just to have her sitting in that fateful congressional hot seat in 1994 being grilled to explain why the rogues gallery of White guys who precede her made the unconscionable decision to spike the nicotine content to make cigarettes more addictive.
Never mind that it only reinforces what a dog and pony show most congressional hearings are these days that Congress did not subpoena any of the White guys who actually knew about GM’s decision to sit in the hot seat.
In any case, GM will now have to pay millions per claimant to dam the flood of lawsuits now threatening to wash away its profits for years to come. How’s that for being penny wise and pound foolish. More importantly, being forced to recall 2.6 million cars, to say nothing of the fatalities this ignition defect caused, makes a mockery of GM’s famous slogan that:
What’s good for GM is good for America.
Meanwhile, from day one, Barra has spent more time apologizing for what is arguably the biggest corporate cover-up in U.S. history than running what the board promised her would be a “new GM.” The irony is not lost on me that the board clearly sold her a lemon when it made her GM’s first female CEO….
When daunting challenges were turning what should have been the honeymoon period of Obama’s presidency into a nightmare, I argued (in jest) that the gods of White male dominion were conspiring to make him fail so spectacularly that Whites would not vote for another Black to be president for at least 100 years. Well, perhaps those same gods are conspiring now to make Barra fail so spectacularly that no board of any Big Three automotive company would hire another female to be CEO for at least 100 years.
Whatever the case, there’s no denying that, like Obama, Barra could be forgiven for thinking that her pioneering position is turning out to be a poisoned chalice. But, like Obama, Barra appears to have the intelligence and skills set to succeed, despite the odds … and gods.
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