‘Sometimes dead is better’

The Stephen King '80s horror novel "Pet Sematary" told the story of a supernatural Indian burial ground behind the town's pet cemetery. Generations of children learned that if they buried their pets in the rocky soil, overnight they would return alive.

The novel's lead character, Louis, buried his cat "Church" there only to find the reanimated cat strange and different. Meaner, smelly and "a little dead," Church hunted mice and birds only to rip them apart without eating them.

President Barack Obama would do well to remember the simple lessons of this novel as he proceeds to bury the nation's auto industry into the rocky soil of socialism. Dead companies that re-emerge zombies of the state won't behave quite right. They will be new creatures propped up by taxpayer cash, stumbling around in an American consumer system with no fear of the normal consequences of failure. Absent free-market pressures, Obama Motors will produce cars born by congressional fiat (pardon the pun). Picture the Henry Waxman and the Maxine Waters limited edition models -- won't run, but the left-turn signals work great!

It's a scary prospect.

It was a mistake to put Chrysler on life support with bailout money. It wasted precious cash. It's a bigger mistake to put the corpse of Chrysler in the grave of a government-guided bankruptcy and reanimate it as a company owned primarily by the Obama administration and big labor.

That's worse than death because just as Stephen King's "Church" the cat emerged just "a little dead," so will Chrysler. It will have the competitive instincts of the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of the good sense that can be learned only by business risk.

You can already see the signs. Chrysler no longer hears the voice of the marketplace. Chrysler hears the voice of its new politically correct masters. And what do those voices whisper? Well, the mad scientists at the White House already claim Chrysler will build super-green cars, not because Americans necessarily "want" greener Chryslers, but because Americans "need" them.

And to heighten the drama, the United Auto Workers (because, as unions always say, workers and their dues have already sacrificed too much) will make sure Chrysler's cost structure in no way adjusts to the market by lowering worker costs.

So, Chrysler will build cars you don't want at a price you won't pay. But fear not. When that inevitability becomes apparent, the Obama administration will bribe consumers with increased "green" tax incentives. At that point the horror show will be complete.

Chrysler's most popular brand, the rugged and cool Jeep, will undergo an Obama makeover. Four-wheel drive? Fun? Good looking? Thirteen miles per gallon? Not in this new world order, pal. The new, "Pet Sematary" Jeep is three-wheel drive, boring, ugly and capable of outperforming a golf cart -- barely.

You can almost hear the sales pitch. "Pick yourself up and drop yourself off at your nearest government office to buy the new electric Jeep. It can't go off-road anymore, but that's OK because who wants to pay the $10-per-gallon off-road vehicle gasoline tax in this time of environmental crisis?"

If we had any sense, we'd heed the warning given the main character in "Pet Sematary" before he went mad and moved from burying his dead cat to burying his dead wife in that old Indian burial ground. The warning was simple: There are places not to "go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to."

Chrysler's alive. It shouldn't be. Not like this.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.