First, Chrysler LLC, a ward of Cerberus Capital Management LP, effectively is dead. Second, no option, up to and including bankruptcy, can be dismissed should the Big Three bleed-out continue. Third, the next administration and a presumably Democrat-controlled Congress will be compelled to craft some kind of bailout for Detroit Auto lest its collapse spread a lot further than the post-industrial crowd realizes is possible. One danger here, especially among analysts and the media, is conflating the disparate issues facing GM, Ford and Chrysler -- GM's possible acquisition of Chrysler; access of automotive finance companies to the Federal Reserve's discount window; faster delivery of energy bill money to Detroit -- into one big bailout basket. That the Bush Administration's Treasury Department is loath to redirect billions of the $700 billion appropriated by Congress to help restart the clogged banking system does not mean the administration categorically opposes assisting the auto industry. It just wants Congress to do it. Or the White House wants the Department of Energy to speed disbursement of $25 billion in federal dough to the automakers by quickly drafting rules initially thought to be 18 months in the making. Detroit doesn't have that kind of time, not in this economy. The only question is how big the bailout will be and who'll line up behind the companies. After the auto executives, unlikely to relinquish control voluntarily in exchange for taxpayer dough, would be the United Auto Workers as an institution. Then would come the interests of their members and retirees; thousands of dealers; auto-dependent communities and, yes, suppliers, the latest to hook themselves to the federal gravy train. It's a mess. Take market pressures, then add plunging consumer confidence, frozen credit and cowardly bankers. Combine with financially crippled automakers whose sales slump is exceeded only by their declining credibility. Finally, stir in the influence of organized labor, its claim to represent 'working families' and the political impulse to be seen as saving them at the expense of other, seemingly disconnected taxpayers. Push it all through a mold labeled 'politics.' The result: government bureaucrats dictating business decisions for an industry sector that got where it is in part because it couldn't (or wouldn't) make the right decisions itself. FDR's 'brain trust' would have loved it. How this intervention could temporarily forestall industrial calamity is obvious. How it would make the American-owned auto industry, with its damaged brands and chronic weaknesses, truly competitive and financially viable again is much less so. The best the industry's most ardent boosters can say is that the surviving hulks called GM and Ford would be more profitable, if smaller. But do those assumptions, based on savings expected from the full effect of the 2007 contract with the UAW, account for the negative impact a bailout could have on sales? Not so sure they do. Federally administered medicine might prove to be almost as bad as an unforgiving market-driven cure. But that doesn't mean a bailout won't come anyway. Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106 or [email protected] or detnews.com/howes.