Valley needs to hear specifics from presidential candidates

Unless Ohio suddenly loses its battleground status in the presidential election, the Mahoning Valley will continue to be a stopping off point for both Democrat Barack Obama and his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden and Republican John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin. And while we appreciate the attention, this region, more than any other in the state, is directly affected by decisions made in Washington.

All the talk from the candidates about the new economy is fine, but forgive us our parochial bent when we ask, “How does this area fit in?”

We didn’t get an answer when McCain and Palin held a rally Tuesday at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, or when Biden addressed a crowd in downtown Youngstown on Thursday. While the speeches were about the current financial crisis that is roiling the stock market in the U.S. and markets around the world, they were largely boilerplate.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee came closest to tailoring his remarks to the region when he said that an Obama administration would “reinvest” billions in the auto industry to help it retool for the next generation of fuel-efficient automobiles. The pledge certainly struck a chord locally, where General Motors’ Lordstown assembly plant is gearing up for the Cruze, the successor to the highly successful Chevrolet Cobalt.

There is a bill before Congress supported by McCain and Obama that would give the struggling American automakers $25 billion in federal loans to be used to help GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC upgrade their factories to produce cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles as required under an energy bill passed last year, the Associated Press reported last week.

It would be naive not to recognize the role that presidential politics is playing. The major beneficiaries of the injection of public dollars would be Ohio and Michigan, two battleground states in the Nov. 4 election.

Federal bailouts

While we have traditionally taken a cautious approach to the federal government bailing out private companies, we recognize that the auto industry in the U.S. is in a fight for its survival.

GM’s economic presence in the Mahoning Valley is plain to see. The company’s plans to keep the Lordstown plant humming for many years to come represents a $1 billion-plus investment. There also has been a significant infusion of state economic assistance.

It is a fact that American automakers are on an uneven playing field when it comes to competing with foreign manufacturers, especially the Japanese.

GM, for instance, has legacy costs tied to pensions and health care that foreign makers do not have.

Indeed, the cost of providing health care coverage to its employees and retirees adds $1,500 to the cost of every vehicle GM produces.

Such issues can only be addressed in Washington.

The presidential candidates would be doing their candidacies and the Valley a great deal of good by discussing in detail their views of how the global manufacturing playing field can be leveled.

This region is also working hard to enter the high technology sweepstakes, and we are eager to hear McCain and Obama lay out their vision for turning old industrialized areas with highly skilled blue-collar workers into meccas of the new economy.

We welcome return visits from the Democratic and Republican contenders, but we would ask them to spare us the stump speeches and political platitudes and give the people of the Valley real cause for optimism.