I'm About To Have Another Blowout

If you have any political values that you care about, you've probably experienced the frustration of seeing your ideas tarnished in the eyes of the public because the politicians implementing them are either incompetent or corrupt.  Just by bad luck, you know you're going to have to wait years for the bad taste to wash from the public's mouth.

That's what I've felt like watching General Motors' ignition recall scandal.  I don't want to diminish the tragedy of the deaths and injuries attributed to this problem, but in addition to anger over that, I have a lot of frustration that they've fumbled the American car industry's recovery.  Just as they were turning the corner, putting out genuinely better cars, a reminder of the old Detroit appears out of nowhere.

That's why GM won't come back from this as easily as Toyota did from their mechanical flaws.  Sure, Toyota had further to fall, due to a much better reputation for quality. But their scandal was so uncharacteristic that it was easy to forgive them once the memory of it faded.  But a potentially fatal flaw that they knew about, wouldn't fix in spite of a low cost, and then hid in the bureaucracy?  It's hard to imagine you could concoct a single flaw that would so perfectly give the impression that it was business as usual for GM.  I've always been disappointed in how little the average person has noticed the American industry's attempts come back, with many fully believing that they are still at their Pinto nadir.  Confirmation Bias will ensure that the current blunders are lodged in their brains forever.

I'm not sure how they should really get out of this.  People have been critical of new CEO Mary Barra's performance on the issue, since she has so far done little more than admit that she doesn't know much about what happened.  Some have said that this is an opportunity to redefine the company the way Tylenol did in the wake of the early-eighties cyanide poisonings.  But it will be hard to do that when GM is not an innocent bystander.  Probably the best they can do is to concede the lawsuits, and throw as many execs under the bus as they can.  Making so many enemies may end Barra's career early, but it's not looking too promising anyway right now.