Larry, Moe and Curly, the three stooges who head the three failing behemoths called GM, Ford and Chrysler once the three titans of the automotive industry, flew into Washington, D.C. on their three corporate jets to beg Congress for $25 billion smackeroos of American’s money, a bailout, the three said, so they can get in front of the curve and catch up in innovation to the companies that are putting them out of business.

No longer the leaders in technology and corporate originality, the American automotive industry is, as is much of American industry, living in a time-warp. Motown is stuck in the doo-wop fifties when the big family car was the symbol of status and gas was thirty-two cents a gallon. Bowling was the favorite pastime of the hard-working Joes who kept the assembly line going. Unions ruled the day, and a guy working in those factories gave his company his all in return for a just-decent wage, a promise of family benefits and the knowledge that upon retirement, old Joe could continue living in his comfortable home, feeding his family and maintain his health with the pension of security he’d earned.

The workers continued to work hard, but management failed the worker. Ah, the excesses of power. The top brass got hungry. The focus became the bottom line, not the assembly line. Innovation became the third rail of the industry; the term fuel efficiency as toxic to the automakers as is nuclear waste to our planet.

We all know the story of how the Japanese saw the weakness and capitalized on it building smaller, more comfortable, safer, better built more fuel efficient automobiles offered at a better price. The Germans and the English went for the upscale market and that fancy Cadillac still built on the 50’s GM chassis soon became last season’s trendy must-have replaced by Mercedes-Benz and more recently Lexus.

But still, the Big Three didn’t quite get it. And after listening to their pathetic pitches to Congress, it’s questionable as to whether they get it now.

The Big Three tell us that their problem is their union contracts; that workers get too much of the pie before the car is even built. This may be true and perhaps the union contracts need to be revisited. But so do the salaries of the Big Brass, and needless to say, the machinations of the company.

The big fix will take a lot of sacrifice from both workers and management.

They know they have to build fuel efficient automobiles if they are to be competitive. And although they’ve started doing that it was only after they found themselves forced by Congress to meet new fuel efficiency standards, and a marketplace that demanded they do so.

Whether they get the money they want from Congress or they find themselves having to declare bankruptcy and retool, whether they all make it through these perilous times or not, is not the issue.

What will remain is an industry that for too long found itself behind the curve and only now is catching up to the times. Great.

But then what?

What becomes not just an industry, but a nation continually finding itself behind the curve?

Why did no one see the economic tsunami that was coming until it was already here? Why did no one do anything to correct the housing bubble when everyone knew it was going to burst? Why are our highways crumbled, and why weren’t they fixed before the problem became so massive? Why has the crisis of our nation’s health care system been allowed to reach catastrophic proportions? Why is the insurance industry in tatters?  And why was it allowed to implode as it has? And why oh why was Osama bin laden not taken out after he made his first strike against America?

We’ve become the Band-aid Nation; we’re the Dutchman who ran out of fingers trying to shore up the dike. We’re chronically behind the eight ball. We’re a country behind the curve.

Watch Hank Paulson put the Band-aids on the financial mess if you think this isn’t a nation struggling to stay on top of things. If it weren’t so pathetic it would be amusing to watch the Secretary change his approach to the country’s financial implosion from day to day. He says he has to make changes as the situation changes. How about what’s really happening is that Secretary Paulson is responding to the market rather than manipulating the market, a follower, not a leader.

There are many who say that America has lost its edge. It has; that’s what a nation always behind the curve becomes. The question is, how do we fix the problem?

We can start by denying Larry, Moe and Curly their bailout. Maybe GM and Ford will be forced to declare bankruptcy and regroup. Maybe Chrysler will go under. Maybe, Americans will have to suffer the consequences and it will get even scarier for many.

But maybe, just maybe, when we’re all absolutely faced with the hard reality of the result of America’s complacency, we’ll do what Americans can do and have done in the past: pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again…hopefully, on the right side of the curve

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