New GM Chief's ties to the Chicago Machine

DON'T BE HARD ON GM'S NEW CHAIRMAN EDWARD WHITACRE for confessing during an interview last week that he knows nothing about cars. He simply suffered a Joe Biden moment. Texans often tumble over their tongues when taking a stab at humility. In fact, few car companies, let alone their CEOs, know how to build cars, which is why so many of them are conking out. The Obama administration, in my view, picked Whitacre to run General Motors (ticker: GM) because he has a more important talent: He knows how to play Chicago-style politics.

Whitacre predominantly donates money to GOP causes, but he is no party purist. While serving as chairman and chief executive of SBC, the regional Bell that grew under his leadership into AT&T, Whitacre helped a couple of influential Chicago Democrats -- both friends of President Barack Obama -- enrich themselves between political gigs. He gave former commerce secretary Bill Daley a very sweet job and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel a very sweet investment-banking opportunity.

I have written about the Emanuel deal before ("Unraveling Rahm Emanuel's Fast Fortunes," Dec. 22, 2008). In short, SBC picked up a residential security outfit in acquiring telecom Ameritech and was ordered in 2000 by the Federal Communications Commission to divest itself of the property. Ameritech had sunk $1.4 billion into the subsidiary -- SecurityLink -- and SBC thought it could sell it for about that much.