Conspiracies form foul air

Aromas wafting from Washington bear a semblance to things bears do in the woods, acts that disturb olfactory sensibilities but don’t surprise much. There’s a particular and peculiar stench emanating from the district over the closings of car dealers under government-mandated restructuring at Chrysler and General Motors. A sentiment prevails that Republican donors disproportionately compose targeted Chrysler dealers, a move right-wing bloggers consider politically driven. But is perception fouled by reality?

Partisans on both sides are sure of the answer. We are less so, though we sense ourselves leaning sharply.

WorldNetDaily, whose slants are beloved on the right, studied the 789 dealers on Chrysler’s hit list and found their owners contributed some $450,000 to Republican presidential candidates and the party while donating less than $11,000 to Democratic candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Just one gave to Obama, according to the Washington Examiner.

That trend, by the way, holds for two principals at Paul Obaugh Ford-Chrysler, a Staunton dealer under Chrysler’s axe. Combined, Charles and Paul Obaugh donated $1,000 to state Republican candidates and just $200 to Democrats.

So there you have it, an ironclad case of bias, right? Not quite.

Math guru Nate Silver, a supporter of Obama’s named by Time among the world’s 100 most influential people, did some, well, math and found that 88 percent of all donors among car dealers gave money to Republicans. This, Silver points out, hardly startles. Car dealers, he writes on his blog, “are usually male, they are usually older ... and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor. I can’t think of too many other natural fits for the Republican Party.” Car dealers as a group, in other words, are mostly Republican, so those cut by automakers are mostly Republican donors.

Hence our lean.

We didn’t buy it when the Treasury Department sought distance from the slashing of dealerships. Stories most notably in the Detroit Free Press and Los Angeles Times, backed by quotes from auto executives, said the task force pushed hard for the reductions. But the suggestion that this was a tool of partisan retribution would turn Obama from merely misguided, at least to our thinking, to oafish tyrant.

The president’s affinity for swelling government and unprecedented intervention in the private sector bothers us. But a move such as the one his opponents ascribe to him on the dealer closings would make him something Obama so far has not shown himself to be – a fool and a particular kind, a fool on things political. Obama is nothing if not politically deft. Further, Silver’s numbers demonstrate blogs’ dangers, principally in the failure to provide perspective, something so-called mainstream media, however pilloried, are paid to regard as a responsibility not an option.

This does not preclude the possibility of political taint. Some dealers claim they’re profitable yet being hit anyway. Florida Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan along with competitors of dealers partly owned by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty were zapped. That stirs odors. We are predisposed to doubt the conspiracy theories, but at least a slight muddle persists.

Obama and carmakers could clear the air by providing precise explanations regarding how the decisions were made. And Obama might note the perils of government wading so deeply into the private sector, a move that invariably carries with it political scents that seldom please.