Actually, no. What he’s excited about is the left having acquired a massive labor force which it can use to serve whatever leftist end it wishes. To hell with General Motors as a car company; let’s shift to a full-blown wartime command economy footing and force GM to start churning out bullet trains and solar panels and green energy devices and everything else under the Democrats’ Christmas tree. Americans may love their cars, but the environment doesn’t. So they’ll simply have to go:

For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories — that simply isn’t true).

No word on where this will leave GM’s competitors; presumably they’ll have to be shut down or seized in due course and reoriented for the sake of Mother Nature. And to pay for it? A new two-dollar tax on gasoline, which won’t at all have systemic economic effects as businesses pass their new transportation costs on to consumers. What could go wrong?

If Olby — a firm opponent of expansive executive power while Bush was in office — sees any pitfalls or slippery slopes in this stroke of genius, he keeps it to himself.