Nolan Finley

Politicians shoot Michigan the bird

You can't scream (expletive deleted) in the newspaper, but you can in the chambers of the U.S. Capitol.

For most of the past two years, as the presidential campaign raged around us but rarely crossed our borders, we begged for national attention.

We actually believed that if the politicians and policy makers would just come here, see the struggles of our sustenance industry, talk to our laid-off workers and drowning business owners, walk over our devastated landscape, the scales would fall from their eyes and they'd rush to our rescue.

Boy, we really had that nailed, didn't we?

When the spotlight finally turned on Michigan, it burned like a laser. Instead of sympathy, we got kicked in the kidneys.

When Congress made its cursory exam of our condition, the diagnosis was that it's our own fault.

Detroit, the politicians and commentators declared, had forgotten how to play in the industry it founded. They ruled we haven't a clue about making cars for modern consumers who don't really want those big trucks and sport utility vehicles they keep on buying.

Our executives, they decided, are boneheads; our workers are coddled and overpaid, unwilling to give up outdated comforts to save their jobs.

The ongoing transformation of the auto industry? Well, no, they've missed that. The Big Three's fabulous new models? Sorry, they drive Beemers. The wrenching contract concessions the UAW coughed up last year? Too little, too late.

Instead of asking us what we needed, they told us what we deserved -- nothing.

Our corporate gods were dragged before the snarling mob and lectured on how to pinch pennies and run a complex organization -- by members of Congress, no less. And at every chance, the Detroiters had their noses rubbed in the success of Toyota and Honda.

They were forced to silently suffer their humiliation when you knew what they really wanted to do was stand up and shout, "Stick it where the sun don't shine," and march out of the room. But they couldn't, the jobs of a half-million workers were resting on their shoulders. So they answered every lash with, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

Back home, we were shocked by the ferocity of the attacks. Even those who voted for the automakers prefaced their support with diatribes describing an industry that disappeared a decade ago and yet is very much still alive in the minds of Detroit's critics.

This was not what we counted on when we invited Washington to focus on Michigan issues.

But we've learned something useful. We're alone in this miserable, rotting boat. Washington won't be our savior.

Remember, it was President-elect Barack Obama who declared Detroit has its "head in the sand" and led the call for tying string after strangling string to the loan package.

If Michigan, Detroit and the Big Three automakers survive, it won't be because Washington threw us a lifeline. It'll be because we finally realized we've got to save ourselves.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com or (313) 222-2064. Read his blog at forums.detnews.com/blogs/, and watch him at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on "Am I Right?" on Detroit Public TV, Channel 56.