By Bill Visnic

President Obama didn't come to Detroit last week to drive a 2011 Chevrolet Volt off the assembly line at General Motors Co.'s Hamtramck plant; he came to tacitly declare a success of the federal bailouts of GM and Chrysler Group LLC.

But, like his predecessor George W. Bush when he stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and infamously summarized the then-fledgling Iraq war as a "mission accomplished," President Obama is a smidge premature in effectively closing the books on the controversial bailouts and proclaiming victory.

True, GM and Chrysler are barely a year removed from bankruptcy and seem to be in improving health, despite a far from resolute rebound for the auto industry as a whole. Both companies' empires are much slimmed-down and their debt all but eliminated. Their executives talk commitment to the new-age business practices that, at least in part, had to be forced upon them.