It didn't need to come to this, like this. Detroit's Big Three and the UAW could have reached more competitive labor agreements sooner, but the we-won't-move-until-we-have-a-crisis culture doesn't allow such foresight. There would have been confrontation because there always was. Detroit's engineers could have developed smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles sooner, but their high costs (see labor model, product mix, brand portfolios and bureaucratic inertia) couldn't be covered. Comparatively cheap gas and the American appetite for bigger, heavier, more revenue-producing metal made it easier to do the same ol' thing and expect a different result. Until it wasn't. The boards of directors at GM and Ford and whoever owned Chrysler LLC (The Americans? The Germans? The private equity sharpies?) could have long ago held successive managements truly accountable. Instead, bureaucratic incrementalism and improved product quality sufficed for progress, even as market shares declined, losses mounted and investor capital evaporated by the billions. No, it didn't have to come to this, an automotive Waterloo legitimately exacerbated by a year-long recession, the credit crunch and plummeting consumer confidence. But the truth is that Detroit's dire predicament is worse than its rivals' because its balance sheets are so weak. So it has come to this. The Big Three CEOs will return to Congress this week, chastened, forced to defend restructuring plans likely to clash with the we-need-to-protect-jobs crowd in Washington. Worse, the Detroit execs will be pleading their cases in a town whose policy making -- by Republicans and Democrats alike -- has tightened their financial squeeze. For most of its eight years, the Bush administration has ignored Detroit's concerns, except when the automakers could help in the dark days after the Sept. 11 attacks. And southern Republicans, whose home-state automakers mostly hail from Japan, Germany and South Korea, are leading the opposition against bridge loans for Detroit. The Democratic-controlled Congress, and it predecessors, expanded fuel-economy mandates even as it ignored increased federal fuel taxes to spread the financial burden. The lawmakers waited until last year to pass significant energy policy, and backed costly state-by-state standards on greenhouse gas emissions that are staunchly opposed by domestic and many foreign-owned automakers. Hardly an admirable record for a government, right or left, whose leadership now is clamoring to help an industry teetering near collapse. The hypocrisy is as stunning as the faux outrage issuing from coastal Democrats and southern Republicans -- that, and the fact that such a disconnect between the core auto business and national politicians simply wouldn't happen in major European or Asian nations. Except in Britain, where nationalization of its moribund domestic auto industry, circa late 1960s-early '70s, morphed into the terminal decline and then foreign ownership of such brands as Jaguar, Rover, Land Rover and Aston Martin. They survived the shakeout. Others, like Austin and Morris, didn't. Cars and trucks still are assembled in Britain, but the plants are controlled by owners in Japan, Germany, India and the United States. The cautionary tale exposes the potential dangers for public (that is, political) ownership of long-private automakers and, second, how bailouts can devolve years later into dissolution and collapse. The challenge for Detroit this week in Washington is to show why -- and how -- this time would be different. Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106, [email protected] or detnews.com/howes.