Despite the attempts in last night’s GOP debate in Detroit to politicize Detroit’s problems, the history is quite diferent. Detroit’s decline was the result of business decisions going back to the 1950’s. A utomakers ignored threats on the horizon and continued business as usual. Japan climbed from the ashes partly by applying Edward Deming’s quality concepts. By the 1980’s, Detroit woke up, but its market share had already plummeted. During part of that time, Michigan had a solid conservative Governor, George Romney. Add to that the fact that Detroit never fully recovered from race riots following the assasination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the impact of Ralph Nader, who pointed out that some of the cars being produced were “not safe at any speed,” and it becomes clear that much more is at work than political ideology. This ideological obsession really keeps us in the dark as far as solving the problems American cities face. That’s my opinion. What do you think?