44, Day 70: The Detroit Shuffle

An ongoing log of the daily activities of the 44th president of the United States during his first 100 days:

-President Obama turned salesman Monday, explaining his decision over the weekend to reject incomplete restructuring plans of General Motors and Chrysler. He was generous enough to spread around the blame for Detroit's problems -- saying they result from "a failure of leadership from Washington to Detroit" -- but bluntly warned both automakers that they must extract much deeper sacrifices from their employee, dealers, creditors, and suppliers, or face collapse. GM, which had to fire its CEO just to be considered for more help, has 60 days to work out its problems; Chrysler, which the government says is no longer viable on its own, has half that time to seal a partnership with Fiat of Italy.

-At the same time, the White House was scrambling to explain why it required the defenestration of GM chief executive Rick Wagoner as a condition of bailout aid even though it never asked for the heads of any of the failing financial institutions that have soaked up far more taxpayer assistance. Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs was also at a loss to explain why the administration was ordering automakers to rewrite their employment contracts with assembly line workers just days after saying that AIG's employment contracts with its financial-services workers couldn't be changed.

-Perhaps not coincidentally, the president resumed warning financial executives of the dangers of perceived excessive salaries and bonuses on Wall Street. "To the extent that they are showing restraint that compensation packages are structured so that there is some deferral until money is returned to taxpayers, that will be good for everybody," he said in a Financial Times interview. "If voters perceive that it is a one-way street, that we are just pouring more and more money into institutions and seeing no return other than avoiding catastrophe, then it is harder to make an argument for further intervention."

by Mark Stein

Sources: The Detroit Free Press, the Huffington Post, The New York Times, and the Financial Times.