THE LION LYING DOWN WITH THE LAMB

12/4/08

On today’s (i.e., Thursday, 12/4’s) Wall Street Journal Opinion page (A17), the Journal quotes Michael Moore complaining that his Chrysler (from his description, I am assuming it is a Chrysler 300, but could conceivable be a Crossfire) starts only sporadically.

Since when does the Journal cite Michael Moore as an authority on anything? I have to admit that I like Michael Moore. Sure, I disagree with him most of the time, though far less often of late. But his movies are entertaining and thought provoking and he gives the impression of being a sincere guy who genuinely cares about the average person. But the Wall Street Journal, the former voice of free men and free markets turned cheerleader for all things Republican, and especially for the current occupant of the White House, has never had a good thing to say about Michael Moore. I suppose that, as is typical lately with the Journal, all sense of shame and proportion goes out the window as long as we an all join hands and stick it to the Big 3 and the UAW. Why, if someone so liberal, even radical, as Michael Moore finds the Big 3 so incompetent and repugnant (He may not feel that way about the Big 3, by the way, but the Journal’s editing of his DailyBeast.com comments would lead one to believe that he does.), revulsion at the Big 3 and the people who work at them might just be the next great bipartisan cause. But, as usual, the Journal misses the point by trying to see everything through the lens of politics, which is, by the way, quite interesting for a publication that daily pledges its fidelity to small government and free enterprise.

It’s not surprising that people across the political spectrum love to pound on the Big 3. It doesn’t take a certain political philosophy to bash the Big 3; it takes only a glaring ignorance of the auto industry. While one could legitimately argue that the Big 3, taken as a whole, have not quite caught up to the Japanese manufacturers in terms of that nebulous quality called, well, quality, one would be a fool to say that the Big 3 produce junk and are far behind their Japanese competition. In fact, according to J.D. Powers IQS, the Big 3 are neck and neck with their Japanese competitors and, in most cases, far ahead of the European competition. According to the far more important longer term (3 year) quality surveys, the Big 3 are only slightly behind the Japanese nameplates and ahead of the European nameplates. The latter is not surprising given the vast improvements in quality that have taken in place among the Detroit 3 in the last few years.

It is also a mistake to consider the “Big 3” and the “Japanese nameplates” into meaningless agglutinations, as is so common that even I did it in the last paragraph. Some Big 3 makes, such as Buick, Cadillac, and Mercury, are even with or ahead of the best of the Japanese nameplates, such as Toyota, Lexus, and Infiniti, in reliability. Further, Caddy, Buick, Mercury and several other domestic marques are far ahead of Mercedes and VW in most measures of product reliability.

(Note that Chrysler nameplates are noticeably absent from the upper ranks of most quality and reliability measurements, so Mr. Moore might be onto something. But somehow one suspects that the inclusion of Mr. Moore’s quote was not inspired by a sudden desire of the Journal to single out Chrysler for criticism.)

Again, do the Big 3 deserve a bailout? On its face, no. But the “free market” argument that the Wall Street Journal is trying so hard to make goes out the window when the Journal has supported (I know…oh so reluctantly) the bailout of Wall Street. But why such Schadenfreude at the problems of the Big 3 that the opinion of a man the Journal would normally find despicable suddenly becomes “Notable and Quotable”?