The tenuous balance in owning GM

For ages, people have been crying out for government to operate more like a business. Now, it appears, federal officials will get some inside experience in what that means.

Introducing your new auto company, General Motors.

GM's official descent this week into long-predicted bankruptcy sets up a critical test not just of the Obama administration, but of the nature of our capitalism. Even if as a nation, we may have long since given up on Thomas Paine's famous epithet that "that government is best that governs least," no one can feel too good about the government owning a car company.

The Obama experiment, we are promised, will be different and will be short. Let's hope so. For already, the key indicators do not seem to bode well for the separation of commerce and state. We've ordered the removal of the corporation's chairman, expressed plans to replace most of its board of directors, dictated profit goals and second-guessed the very restructuring of dealerships we ordered the company to institute. No doubt, GM's announcement of impending plant closings will result in new rounds of partisan squabbling and, even more debilitating, political sectionalism as elected officials race to spare plants and operations that have more to do with their home districts than with the overall health of the company.

To be sure, rescuing GM from financial ruin is a justifiable goal. But just as important as rescuing the company is the value of letting the business run as a business by people who know the business.

The Obama administration insists that this is its aim. Officials have said they hope GM could emerge from bankruptcy within three months. In the interim, they promise only the level of interference in the company's business that a 60 percent shareholder stake would justify.

"The federal government will refrain from exercising its rights as a shareholder in all but the most fundamental corporate decisions," Obama said. "When a difficult decision has to be made on matters like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the New GM, not the United States government, will make that decision."

Some influence into company decisions surely is justified. Taxpayers have tens of billions of dollars resting on GM's success. They need to know how that money is being used and to speak up when they think it is being misused.

Still, government does not have an encouraging record in the management of business decisions. For that matter, GM and other automakers have demonstrated considerable weakness lately in the ability to sell cars.

The trick will be for both sides of this unappealing alliance to find a balancing point that, as soon as possible, allows GM to get back to the business of making vehicles and the U.S. to get back to the business of government.