[Posted by Karl]

The rightosphere is buzzing about the claim made by Detroit News columnist Daniel Howes:

As part of a [Ford] campaign featuring “real people” explaining their decision to buy the Blue Oval, a guy named “Chris” says he “wasn’t going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government,” according the text of the ad, launched in early September.

“I was going to buy from a manufacturer that’s standing on their own: win, lose, or draw. That’s what America is about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you fail that you gotta’ pick yourself up and go back to work.”

That’s what some of America is about, evidently. Because Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House questioned whether the copy was publicly denigrating the controversial bailout policy CEO Alan Mulally repeatedly supported in the dark days of late 2008, in early ’09 and again when the ad flap arose.

Howes may be wrong about direct causality.  FoMoCo says the campaign continues to run, although the specific ad was taken “out of rotation after 4 weeks which is consistent with the typical lifecycle for the campaign.”  And contrary to some claims on Twitter, even that ad remains on Ford’s YouTube channel.

However, that does not mean that the Obama Administration did not gripe to Ford about the ad.  The widely-mocked AttackWatch has been eager to defend the bailout of GM and Chrysler.  Moreover, touting these bailouts is a key to Obama’s effort to hold onto the Great Lakes region in 2012.  Ford pointing out that it is easily outperforming GM and Chrysler is not helpful to Obama.  Neither is pointing out that the bailout saved nowhere near the million jobs claimed.  Indeed, it is likely that a regular bankruptcy would have yielded about the same number of continuing jobs as the taxpayer-funded bankruptcy.  The only difference is that Obama intervened to bail out his union support at the UAW, rather than the companies’ creditors.  With a economy mired in malaise overall, Obama does not need Ford reminding people that taxpayers were put on the hook to boost his re-election effort.

—

Update: FWIW, it looks like Howe says a Ford VP confirms his claim.

Update 2: Scott Monty, head of social media for FoMoCo: “We did not pull the ad under pressure.”

Update 3: WH flack Dan Pfieffer denies they pressured Ford… which isn’t a denial of complaints.

–Karl

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Via the LA Times Top of the Ticket we learn that Obama had a bit of a slip of the tongue during the CBC banquet.  He was supposed to say:

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

Except he actually said…

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as Jew– as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

Go ahead, watch the video and listen for yourself.  The Top of the Ticket’s Andrew Malcolm says he was confusing Jews with Janitors, and maybe so…  but I tend to think that when he was discussing billionaires he couldn’t get the word Jew out of his mind.

Yeah, I am beginning to think he has a prejudice problem.  There, I said it.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I’m happy to take a shot at Obama when I can do so fairly, but to me it seems clear that he meant to read “Junior” and then recognized the word on his little TeleCrutch.

But still I think he has a spending problem. There, I said it.