Look, former auto czar Steve Rattner isn’t an unbiased observer on the auto bailout. He’s a longtime Dem fundraiser who was directly involved in the bailout (there was also that whole New York state pension fund unpleasantness). I don’t expect Rattner to cut Mitt any slack. But he made one point in our interview with him this morning that bears repeating.
Before we even got to the managed bankruptcy in 2009 that Romney says he called for all along, there were a series of emergency loans in late 2008 to the carmakers from the federal government that Romney opposed. This isn’t a throwaway use of the word “emergency.” Those were do-or-die loans. There was no time to go through a managed bankruptcy then. Those loans are what kept Detroit afloat until a managed bankruptcy. Romney opposed them. If Romney’s position had prevailed, there would have been no emergency loans and no auto industry left to put through a managed bankruptcy.
