The Obama administration has abandoned the idea of naming a “car czar” to help oversee the U.S. auto industry’s restructuring, instead creating an inter-agency task force to deal with the issue, according to senior administration officials.

via Obama Backs Off ‘Car Czar’ to Oversee Detroit – WSJ.com.

The illusion here is that government agents have the power to second guess the auto business to make it better.  The fact is that most of the reason the car companies can’t and won’t be financially sound is due to regulations driven by political interest (unions, green inefficiency, etc).  Government oversight will only be worse because the only thing that has changed is that there is now more government oversight than there was before.

In every other way, the government has no advantage over the private sector.  It doesn’t have any special knowledge about the economy, consumer preferences, etc, that are not available to business owners and stockholders.

So what is the key to government success?  The only possible way to “improve” the companies is to ruthlessly force and subsidize an agenda and use the full force of government propaganda to ensure a specific agenda is followed, that it is reported as a wise agenda, and as long as possible it is reported as a successful agenda.

This won’t come from a committee.  It requires a powerful and usually charismatic leader.  Hayek has explained why and I won’t repeat the argument here.

That’s why Obama is smart to select a committee.  Any one person would be a possible rival.  He’s already having conflicts with others getting media coverage.  Instead, he can play the part himself with a group of “advisors” establishing his role as “the decider” (as another President described the role).