And yet, by backing Gore, who had the support of organized labor, GM would have gained enormous goodwill with the United Auto Workers, goodwill it desperately needed as it attempted to downsize in the new century.
Gore also argued for universal healthcare, a program that, had it become reality, might have relieved GM and the other domestic carmakers of that burden. In testimony before Congress in 2006, GM's former chairman, Rick Wagoner, said the company had spent $5.3 billion on healthcare in 2005 alone, more than it had spent for steel. Elsewhere, Wagoner said healthcare was the single biggest competitive disadvantage the company faced, amounting to a $1,500 handicap on every vehicle produced.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, June 03, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 41 words Type of Material: Correction
GM history: A timeline on the history of General Motors and an accompanying photo caption in Monday's Section A said that Cadillac introduced the first car with air conditioning in 1953. The first car with air conditioning was a 1940-model Packard.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, June 13, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Vintage car photo: In the June 1 Section A, a photo caption that accompanied a column by Dan Neil about General Motors' history identified a car as a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado. The car's model year is 1957.
A Gore administration also would have raised fuel economy standards for carmakers and instituted a significant tax on gasoline; either move would probably have blunted GM's continuing and foredoomed reliance on the full-size truck and SUV market.
As it was, the board's pro-business patricians actively opposed the Gore candidacy. The irony is that the Big Government Democrat might have saved GM from the eventual ignominy of bankruptcy and government ownership.
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It's not that GM hasn't tried to reform. It has. The alarming fact is that GM has done so much right and still failed.
In the last decade the company has slashed its white-collar and blue-collar work forces, closed plants, expanded in Asian markets and -- after an agonizing bit of backroom brinkmanship -- struck a deal with the UAW in 2007 that largely brought its labor costs in line with those of foreign manufacturers assembling cars in non-union shops. In the same agreement, GM and the UAW agreed to establish a union-run healthcare trust that would take much of the company's so-called legacy costs off its books.
Meanwhile, GM's cars and trucks have got vastly better and some -- the Corvette, the Cadillac CTS, the Saturn Vue and Aura -- are world class. One of the miserable consequences of the government-mandated restructuring is the sale of German subsidiary Opel, which makes cars for Saturn, and the loss of the Saturn division itself, which builds exactly the kinds of cars GM needs going forward. At the same time the company has poured $1 billion into a range-extended electric vehicle program, the Volt, as ambitious as anything in the company's history.
