I was in the USAF from '76 until early retirement in '96. One of my strangest memories is how all staff cars and military police vehicles in the early '80s were those stupidly ugly Chrysler K-cars. The military bought them and shipped them all over the world.
How did that happen in a competitive bidding environment?
Obama should take a look at one of Reagan's actual successes because, Lee Iococa paid off a government bail-out in record time.
Update: second gen below made an excellent point and I must admit to myopia. All gov. vehicles should be mandated hybrid or EV!
The way all this went down is that Lee Iacoca took over Chrysler in an earlier financial crisis and to avoid bankruptcy, took a government bail-out. At least Lee was honorable enough to work for a dollar per year until Chrysler paid off that loan. So how did all that work out?
Reagan, unbeknowst to the public, apparently dictated that the military was going to purchase these ugly, unreliable K-cars for every personnel transportation purpose short of emergency response and actual military applications. Of course, K-cars were cheap.
What do you think would happen to the hybrid/EV revolution if President Obama (I now love typing that) issued such a directive to get the ball rolling? I propose that any military transportation need that isn't combat related be mandated to use hybrid and/or EV technologies. This drive train could even be adopted for light delivery vehicles that virtually never leave the base/post as well.
Since most military personnel travel on base or post never exceeds 40 miles per day, we could be running on electric 60-70% of the time! This creates manufacturing economies of scale for the auto makers that benefits U.S. consumers, reduces military operating costs while strategicly increasing energy independence!
This approach was very effective once, using defense spending to help our civilian industrial base. Why wouldn't it work again?