Obama's greatness, incomplete and otherwise.

• Author: Wolfson, Bernard
• Position: Letter to the editor

I wish to compliment the magazine on a comprehensive, fabulously illuminating piece on the record of President Barack Obama's first term and why it will be evaluated so much more favorably by future historians than by contemporary American voters [Paul Glastris, "The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama," March/April 2012]. Many of the arguments you make should be brought to a wider audience before November.

Bernard Wolfson

Paris, France

As the founder and former CEO of a multibillion-dollar public auto retailer, and someone who was intimately familiar with the history and the players involved with the failure of Detroit, I will add another positive wrinkle to Obama's achievements.

An even bigger accomplishment in the auto restructuring, and one on which the administration is even more unwilling to focus, for obvious reasons, was the action the president took once he realized (correctly) that both the management and the boards of GM and Chrysler were incompetent and unworthy of investment. Obama, through car czar Steven Rattner, did what a truly great CEO or private-equity guy would do ... he fired them, and brought in new guys from outside Detroit. That was a huge risk, undertaken at lightning speed, which all of the traditionalists in the industry thought was crazy.

But in one fell swoop, he fixed fifty years of Detroit incompetence at the highest levels. Only Bill Ford had the courage to do something like this previously, when he fired himself and brought in a great guy from outside the industry. And Ford doesn't get the credit he deserves either, though he saved his shareholders and family in the process.

To put it another way, Obama has done two private equity deals in his life. They were bigger than the sum total of every thing Mitt Romney has ever done, and they worked better and faster ... and all the benefit accrued to the nation at large, no skim-off required.

That level of direct involvement and decision making, like...