You can be the captain/I will draw the chart

On and after January 22nd, 2009, conservatives became horrified at the idea of the government deciding which corporate CEOs keep their jobs and which corporations get told what to do. Example: the sacking of GM CEO Rick Wagoner --

Mickey Kaus --

After visibly defenstrating GM CEO RIck Wagoner, and moving to replace the board of directors, won't Obama now "own" the GM problem? If the company shuts down in the near future, costing tens of thousands of blue collar jobs, it will be under executives implicitly or explicitly chosen by Obama. It will be Obama's failure, not simply GM's failure, no?

Jonah Goldberg --

GM is now Obama's company. If it closes, it will be on his say-so. But Obama is a politician, not a CEO ... Of course, the good news is that being a law professor and community organizer totally prepares you to run huge white elephant multinantional corporations.

Mark Steyn --

The descent into corporatism will doom America: The government is not competent to pick winners and losers, and will mire us in long-term Continental-style economic stagnation if it persists.

Aside from anything else, it should be disturbing that GM appears to have evolved into what Canada calls a "Crown corporation" without its nominal owners having any say in the matter.

But we now know that Obama is in the ha'penny place compared to what was going on in the latter days of the Bush Administration --

[Wall Street Journal] NEW YORK -- Then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson threatened to remove Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and the bank's board of directors if the bank backed out of its merger with Merrill Lynch & Co. last year, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.

In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, Mr. Cuomo said his investigation into the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank's merger has found that Mr. Paulson told Mr. Lewis on Dec. 21, 2008, that the government "could or would" replace the bank's management and its directors if the bank exited the deal.

Bank of America/Merrill has a lot of Daddies. None of them seem too happy about it.