The military-GOP complex won’t go quietly into the night:

The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.

They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending. …

There are so many things wrong with this emerging process that it is hard to address the issue concisely. Promoting overspending on defense in order to forestall popular social spending is undemocratic – it creates a false tension between national security and other public policy goals.

The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.

Ultimately, the most dangerous aspect of this development is the threat posed to civil-military relations. We went through a similar process eight years ago, and the results were painful and unsatisfactory.

John McCain heads to Chicago for a sit-down with the President-elect. That and the day’s other transition news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Am I the only one worried that by the time Obama is sworn in on January 20th, the Paulson Treasury will have run through almost a trillion dollars to little or no effect?

FDR said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and there certainly was plenty of fear to go around on the Sunday morning talk shows …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

As we know, crisis can mean opportunity. And sometimes crisis leaves so much broken that it’s the once in a generation or a century opportunity to build stuff from the ground up rather than tinkering on the margins and making incremental change.

Over the weekend I was discussing the question of whether or not we should be bailing out the auto industry. One issue that has come up over the weekend is that we may be wrong to assume that bankruptcy just means conventional Chapter 11 reorganization (which in the abstract at least could be a good thing) rather than liquidation. In the current economic climate and with the credit markets still out of whack, bankruptcy might actually lead directly to liquidation. That probably means at least a million jobs eliminated at in one fell swoop — something I don’t think we can allow in the current situation.

One other point behind the effects on individual families’ lives and the macro-effects on the economy, I think there are real national security implications to losing the domestic auto industry because you lose a substantial amount of your heavy manufacturing base. Maybe I’ve just got my head stuck in the 20th century on this front; but I don’t think so.

A friend points me to this website: it’s Tesla Motors. They have a car that is 100% electric, goes 244 miles per charge and goes from 0 – 60 in 3.9 seconds. Now, I know electric car market is very complicated on both the technology and business fronts. A lot of TPM Readers know a lot about it; and I know very little. I’m sure this Tesla car costs a gazillion dollars. And maybe Tesla’s crap. And some other manufacturer is the one that’s on the right track. (I’m sure I’ll hear from a lot of you soon on this. And that’s great; I want to know.) But that’s not the point. Some people are really far ahead working out the technology. And I’m curious to hear who that is.

But the point is that we’ve got the hood up and maybe the engine out on the national economy. That’s a bad situation on a lot of fronts. But it’s also the opportunity to really change things. Not just fix things on the margins but make the big changes. As long as we’re talking about sums of money in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, let’s not restrict ourselves to considering whether we throw Detroit a lifeline that keeps them in motion and employing their workers through the current recession. Maybe we need to invest 50 billion dollars in having a mass market fully electric car in five years. I don’t see anybody who doesn’t agree that whatever the costs of letting GM go under, that it’s management who drove this company into the ditch with a lot of terrible decisions and unwillingness to change. So maybe we take GM into some sort of managed restructuring, push out management, clean out the equity holders, and use the ‘company’ as the vehicle for leapfrogging the US into the 21st century, non-hydrocarbon auto industry.

As you can see, there are a lot of details I don’t have a handle on. And I’m going to be trying to come up to speed. But one thing I’m confident about is that the real danger we face is being too timid, not too bold. We’re going to spend a ton of money — whether it’s to bailout the auto industry, keep the Great Lakes states on life support for ten years or putting in place some top to bottom program to get us to where we actually need to be. The money, for those who have eyes to see it, are essentially sunk costs at this point. The danger is that we spend all the money and come out the other end still with a big region of the country tied to a dying industry, no true progress on the energy/climate crisis front and a lot more debt.

Calvin Trillin, on what is now purported to be the best barbecue joint in all of Texas.

Apropos of the post below about thinking bold, this is from Time.com …

After years of setbacks and shake-ups, the first Tesla Roadsters were delivered to customers this year. Reviews have been ecstatic, but Tesla Motors has been hit hard by the financial crisis. Plans to develop an affordable electric sedan have been put on hold, and Tesla is laying off employees. But even if the Roadster turns out to be a one-hit wonder, it’s been a hell of an (electric) ride.

Is the credit crisis really drying up investment money for the companies making the big innovations in electric cars? Undoubtedly it is to some degree. But I’d want to see more details.

Late Update: From TPM Reader ES …

I’ve been following the Tesla story closely for a couple of years now. There’s a lot to it — a soap opera’s worth — but it is definitely true that the credit crunch has been a problem for them in terms of financing.

To follow this story, and green car initiatives in general (including the Chevy Volt, which is BIG), autobloggreen.com is must read. It is by far the best online source for information in this area. To read just about Tesla, see: http://www.autobloggreen.com/tag/tesla/

Later Update: “Almost all of Tesla’s $105 million in startup capital has come from wealthy California idealists and venture investors,” Business Week reported last year. Here’s the article.

Yet Another Late Update: TPM Reader GL reminds us that whatever GM’s other problems, and they’re legion, they are the ones behind the Chevy Volt. Jonathan Rauch wrote about the Volt earlier this year in The Atlantic.

Yeah, That Too Update: From TPM Reader MB …

I too have been intrigued by and rooting for Tesla the past few years. But I think the 1st order of business is replacing the electric grid or you’re putting the car(t) before the horse.

If we get mass adoption of Teslas, Volts and Priuses, we’re then using household current to recharge which is generally the equivalent of burning massive amounts of coal in most parts of the country. Ideally you’d want a huge wind/solar buildout and efficient battery manufacturing/recycling in place before the cars arrive en masse.

Not to say we can’t develop them simultaneously but we’re talking massive scale infrastructure requirements.

And a better investment than the Wall Street black hole we’re currently dumping it into.

This is clearly a big issue, a big part of the equation. But I think that mass adoption of electric cars is a problem we’ll deal with when we get there. Not to be flippant about it. But there’s clearly a lot to do. And I don’t see why not to move on all fronts simultaneously.

Absolutely do not miss our TPMCafe Book Club this week. We’re discussing Barton Gellman’s Angler, The Cheney Vice Presidency. Joining the discussion are Paul Mirengoff, practicing lawyer and co-founder of conservative blog Power Line; Spencer Ackerman, senior reporter at the Washington Independent and former TPM reporter and blogger; Jacob Heilbrunn, senior editor at the National Interest and author most recently of They Knew They were Right: The Rise of Neocons; David Greenberg, writer and associate professor of Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers University, “History Lesson” columnist for Slate; and Steve Clemons, political blogger and Director of the American Strategy Program and the New America Foundation.

Here’s Gellman’s post kicking off the discussion. And here’s Heilbrunn’s first response.

We’re all talking about whether GM will get a lifeline from the Feds. But I hadn’t heard that GE has already gotten one, albeit not of the same sort GM is looking for. Last week the federal government, or more specifically the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program agreed to guarantee “as much as $139 billion in long- and short-term debt through next June.”

How’d they manage that? Because the company “owns a federal savings bank and a Utah industrial bank whose deposits are insured by the FDIC.”

Late Update: Let me say a bit more about this. I don’t know GE’s finances or their precise interconnections with the rest of the real economy. But given their role in all sorts of manufacturing, at least in the abstract, I can see the logic of backing their ability to sell debt. It may make a lot of sense. But we should do it because it makes a lot of sense. Not because they happen to own some bank in Utah. The financial press is filled with stories of all sorts of companies that are buying banks for no other purpose than to get a back door into the bailout funds. For a bunch of hardcore market types, I’d like to see a little more of an eye for perverse incentives. Rather than saving the banks, it looks like we’re sucking a big chunk of the economy into the banking sector. Again, drift …