James Bennet at the Atlantic has a pretty intriguing (if far fetched) idea: Obama should ask Mitt Romney to run GM.
Here’s a modest proposal to drive things along: Obama should install Mitt Romney as GM’s chairman. Romney grew up outside Detroit and around cars; his father, George W. Romney, saved American Motors from collapse in the 1950s–by killing failing brands and focusing on compact cars! George Romney successfully took on the Big Three with a “dinosaur fighter” strategy. The son would bring to GM that legacy, the turnaround expertise and credentials he developed at Bain & Company, and the outsider’s eye that GM desperately needs. He would also usefully jack up even further the stakes and the drama of the undertaking.
Could Obama pull another Huntsman and turn a potential 2012 opponent into an administration dependant? (At least temporarily.) Romney prides himself on “turning things around” (i.e. the Olympics), and there aren’t many things in more need of a turnaround than GM.
Even if it would take Romney out of the running in 2012, it’d be one heck of a 2016 launching pad (if he were successful…)