Bredesen’s High Stakes Poker Game With GM

By Kleinheider Posted on June 15, 2009 at 8:00 am

I must say I enjoyed our Governor’s outing of GM’s attempt to extort Tennessee out of $200 million last week.

What is most interesting is that most folks see the move as an admission by Bredesen that he has given up on keeping the GM plant.

I don’t think he has given up. He’s just playing the cards he’s been dealt. He’s not exactly working from a position of strength. He can’t match other the states in the running monetarily. We have a budget crisis and frankly our economy is, in fact, strong enough that we can afford to lose GM in a way that Michigan just can’t.

Bredesen doesn’t have any political stroke here. He spent much of 2008 sticking a fork in the eye of Obama and the state didn’t vote for him. Tennessee is not even in play nationally.

At the political negotiating table, Tennessee’s chance at keeping GM here are rubbish. The only way to win is to change the game. And that’s exactly what Bredesen did by taking the shakedown public.

Bredesen is working the only angle he has: shame. Everyone knows that Spring Hill is the best plant in the business sense. It’s newer, more flexible and the labor situation is about as good as you get in this country.

In the backroom, Bredesen (and Tennessee) can’t win. But in the sunshine, the focus gets put on the business again. Spring Hill may still lose the plant, but now, GM will look really bad taking it away.

Now, no one wants to look bad. So after all this bad press, if Bredesen came back to GM this week and said, “Well, I can’t do the 200 million but here’s what I can do.” Might GM look at the offer in a different light now if they can wipe away the shakedown artist rep Bredesen just gave them?

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Tags: GM, Phil Bredesen