President Obama's campaign for reelection released a new television commercial Thursday touting the bailout of the U.S. auto industry, which the president says in the ad "was not popular."
Obama's campaign has made clear it plans to tout the $80 billion in loans given to General Motors and Chrysler in a series of bailouts that began under former President George W. Bush as a central piece of the economic record he will take to voters in the fall.
Critics of the bailouts often note the federal government is unlikely to recover all of its $1.9 billion investment in Chrysler and its investments in GM beyond the initial $6.7 billion loan to the company. Some conservatives derisively refer to GM as "Government Motors" because the federal government still owns a large percentage of the company's shares.
But as he has in campaign speeches for the better part of his first term, Obama pointed in the new campaign ad to the auto industry as proof the entire economy could recover.
"The decision to intervene with the auto industry was not popular, but I was convinced it was the right thing to do," the president says in the 30-second advertisement. "It wasn't just the million jobs that were at stake. It was what built our middle class — creating products stamped with those words 'made in America.'
"What happened in Detroit can happen in all sorts of communities where when you combine American innovation with the best workers in the world, you can succeed," Obama continued.
The Obama ad made no mention of Obama's presumptive Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom Democrats have repeated criticized for writing an op-ed in 2008 as the auto bailouts were first being considered that was titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
Romney has since argued that he was suggesting the companies be placed into a "managed bankruptcy," and he has said the president eventually followed his advice. Democrats counter that Romney was suggesting the auto companies could be saved without federal money, but there were no private firms willing to invest in them during the economic panic that began in the heat of the 2008 election.
Asked about Romney's recent comments about the auto bailout in an interview with ABC News this week, Obama labeled the suggestion that Romney deserves credit for the auto bailout "one of his Etch-a-Sketch moments.
"I don't think anybody takes that seriously. People remember his position, which was, 'Let's let Detroit go bankrupt.' Had we listened to his advice at that time, GM and Chrysler would have gone under and we would have lost probably a million jobs throughout the Midwest," Obama told ABC News.
Romney's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the president's auto-bailout comments, but the Republican National Committee called the new ad from Obama's reelection campaign "a load of you know what" in an email to supporters Thursday.
"Obama's management of the auto bailouts resulted in tens of thousands of jobs lost," the RNC statement said.
