President Elect Barack Obama campaigned very heavily in Detroit Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and Wisconsin. All these areas are part of the industrial base for the US automaker industry. He promised to support the unions and to work with automakers to help them build the next generation of automobiles.

He promised he would bring jobs and that by helping people into alternative energy jobs and new clean industries that 5 million new careers could be created. Currently, he and his economic advisory team, along with Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House are working with General Motors and the UAW along with the other automakers such as Chrysler and Ford to come up with a bailout package which will be in the neighborhood of $30-$50 billion.

This has many economic analysts and stock market pundits who believe in free enterprise and a capitalist system a little worried. Why you ask? Well the US automakers are seen as an old stodgy industry, part of the status quo and by supporting them and bailing them out would do nothing more than help them with their inefficient ways. And in doing so it is propping up old industries rather than the new industries and new jobs that President-Elect Obama had promised.

If President Elect Barack Obama wants to turn blue collar jobs into green collar jobs and promises to spend $150 billion over the next 10 years to do just that, then the bailing out of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will eat up significant monies that could have been used towards the cause that he had promised.

It's almost a Catch-22, because if he gets the money to the big three automakers, the unions will just take all the money and that money will not go towards the research and development needed to bring about hybrids and fuel aid economic cars of the future.

If Senator Barack Obama does not give the money to the automakers, he will hurt the Democratic Party because the unions have been supporting the Democrats and helped him get elected; they will see this as Barack Obama reneging on his promise to support the unions.

The problem with this is, supporting the unions and giving them money are two different things and merely giving money to the big three automakers so the unions can take it is not promoting capitalist ideas or helping the auto industry in the long run.

Either way this is a loser for Barack Obama and this was his first test as a leader. It appears as if he is trying to shift responsibility onto the current administration and stating that there is nothing he can do until he is elected and by that time this issue will have passed or been worked out without him and he will not have to take the fall either way.

Still, Obama cannot vote, "present" once he actually takes office, nor can he hesitate on his decisions, especially choices like this as GM is hemorrhaging cash and will be bankrupt in a few months without an infusion of cash, and lots of it.

If President-Elect Barack Obama gives the money to the automakers then the airlines will surely lineup next and ask for money, along with several other industries that employ hundreds of thousands of people. If the government keeps giving away money to businesses eventually those businesses will tell the government they need trade restrictions to protect their industries, so the taxpayer that's on the hook does not lose out.

Once these trade barriers are in place it will cause other nations to do the same in response and cause trade wars, which could lead to actual wars. Worse, it makes the industries inefficient, because with protectionism there is little competition and therefore no need to be efficient. If a President Barack Obama bails out industry after industry he will prove to his critics that he is a socialist that they warned us about, thus, his political opponents steal his all his political capital making him ineffectual and the media makes light of it.

Indeed, If he doesn't bailout the auto industry, he will lose the unions support and have a public-relations crisis on its hands. See the problem? It's too bad all this political garbage gets in the way of decision making and solving a crisis situation, but that's the way of things. President-Elect Obama is being tested, and it has not even been a week since he won the election. Think on this.