April Fool's Day is now, thankfully, over, though anyone surveying Michigan's economy and key industries has to wonder if we aren't stuck in some prolonged, very bad joke.
Remembering that columnists often write tongue-in-cheek April Fool's columns, I wondered this week what readers might have thought if I had written the following in, say, April 2000:
"April 1, 2009: America's first African-American president this week insisted on the resignation of the head of General Motors as his price for continuing to prop up the failed automaker, which has lost millions of dollars every hour for the past four years.
"Incredibly, there were some who still defended Rick Wagoner, who first drew national notice when he insisted on being flown to Washington in his corporate jet last December to beg for a bailout.
"Outgoing President George W. Bush agreed three months ago to pour $13.4 billion of taxpayer cash into GM, whose stock is now worth less per share than a Big Mac hamburger. Meanwhile, the president said Chrysler has 30 days to merge with Fiat, or die."
Ten years ago, that would have seemed too wacky for even an April Fool's joke. Yet it all came true in the past few days.
Every so often, journalists get asked if they are ever tempted to write a novel. My answer is always the same: No. That's because I couldn't possibly make up anything as heroic, fascinating, sad or ironic as what happens in real life, every day.
As proof of this, we saw a story play out this week that had elements not only of spellbinding fiction, but of Greek tragedy, with a little bit of bad soap opera thrown in. Consider this:
As we all knew, General Motors has been in trouble, losing billions, losing market share and customer confidence. Something had to be done. But GM's chief executive just wasn't moving fast enough, despite repeated warnings.
He wasn't willing to make the painful decisions necessary. There was real fear that the nation's biggest automaker might go out of business. So in a dramatic coup that shocked Detroit, the GM chairman was forced to resign.
Yes, I know that happened this week.
But here's what you may not know -- that also happened seventeen years ago. The circumstances were different, but uncannily similar. Back then, the chairman was Bob Stempel, like Rick Wagoner, a lifelong GM employee.
Stempel had long wanted to be chairman. But he arrived at a time when a recession was on and the company started piling up record deficits, small compared to the money GM has lost in the last few years, but bigger than anybody had ever seen in 1992.
General Motors's market share had fallen by nearly 10 percent in seven years. For years, the board of directors had mostly just collected their compensation and rubber-stamped anything management wanted. But they now were deeply worried.
Most didn't know a lot about the car business, but they did know they didn't want to be blamed if GM failed. So, led by former Procter & Gamble Chairman John Smale, they acted.
In April of that year, they forced Stempel to replace key members of his management team whom they regarded as incompetent cronies. They wanted to send a strong message that GM needed to change the culture and the old way of doing business.
But it didn't work; Stempel just dug in his heels.
Finally, he was forced to resign. A new management team came in, the youngest of whom was the chief financial officer, who was only 39. The new leader was hard-charging Jack Smith.
Four months later, someone got up at a company party and said "What happened at this company can't ever be allowed to happen here again." When change was needed, change had to be made, no matter how painful. GM's new leader vigorously agreed.
"This will never happen again," Smith said.
Eight years later, he handed over the reins of the company to that young new finance director, a man named ...
Rick Wagoner.
As I was saying, you just can't make this stuff up
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