This month's dramatic Chrysler bankruptcy and deal with Fiat isn't the first time Chrysler and the Italians have worked together. My Italian-born father knew Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli's American-born father long before this latest chapter. Only back then, Americans were in the business of saving Italians, not the other way round....!
The causes and consequences of the current crisis are many and complex. But I imagine our dads would have boiled them down this way. As two 20th century Americans, we've been born with a silver dream in our mouth. The American Dream, which means we have everything we need to succeed any honest way we can.
My father, a proud 30-year-long Chrysler dealer in Chicago, would have agreed with his friend's son today when Nardelli said, "It's not the fate I would have chosen, but it has allowed us to save the company." All three of these men would consider this an honest way left to succeed. And, if only the rapacious Wall Street debt-holders will stop bleating over the shortfall this deal will cost them, it will succeed. Chrysler is likely to emerge as strong an American institution as our dads once knew.
What's at stake, though, is more than a company. More than an industry. Even more than a presidential agenda. The stakes here include this challenge to the same American Dream which galvanized our fathers. Can the growling appetite that serves America's taste for free-enterprise capitalism be tempered by the even more intrinsic appetite that serves our taste for the general welfare?
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