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Obama tour aims to tout Motor City success story
President Barack Obama visits Detroit Friday to tout the motor industry's rebirth as proof that his economic policies are working.
Obama -- with an eye firmly on low approval ratings and November's congressional elections -- will tour GM and Chrysler plants, making the case they survived a brutal recession because of his administration's policies.
The visit comes little over a year after GM and Chrysler emerged from a bankruptcy process designed by Washington, and which supporters say has made the firms leaner and meaner.
Thanks to a 64-billion-dollar government bailout, Obama will make the visit not just as president, but as the firms' most important investor, a role that does not sit well with many free market-minded Americans.
But as a shareholder, Obama might just be pleased with what he finds.
GM returned to profit at the beginning of this year, transforming 2009 losses of nearly six billion dollars into a respectable profit of 865 million in the first quarter.
The company is poised to re-list on the stock exchange, a move that could help pay the US taxpayer the 43 billion dollars GM still owes.
At Chrysler the picture is slightly less rosy, but analysts believe the firm is poised to swing back into profit soon.
With close to one in ten American workers still without a job, Obama will be keen to underscore not only the firms' financial success but the thousands of jobs saved with the rescue.
The White House argues those bailouts were just the type of "tough decisions" Obama took to keep firms hiring workers, and keep plants open.
But he has yet to convince Americans that is really the case. According to a recent poll just four in ten American voters believe their 44th president is managing the economy well.
