GM Needs a Political Strategy

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Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Share

Wall Street Journal

GM Needs a Political Strategy

What’s good for Ma Bell is good for GM.

That was our second thought on hearing that former AT&T chief Ed Whitacre would become the new GM board chairman once the company reorganized under Obamaruptcy. Our first thought was: Now Ivan Seidenberg has to get a car company.

Mr. Whitacre came up as an engineer and ran AT&T from 1990 to 2007. He’ll feel right at home. Whether he liked it or not, government was his partner all the way at AT&T. The company may not have been owned by the feds, as GM now is, but government had its finger in every decision he made. Then again, politics was and ever has been integral to GM long before it turned to the government for a bailout. Succeeding for Mr. Whitacre will mean, first and foremost, making sense of GM’s relationship with Washington.

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