Brian Deese, 31, With Relative Little Economic Experience, in Charge of Dismantling General Motors Corp.

The last person you would expect to head up the dismantling of automotive giant General Motors is Brian Deese, 31. He doesn't fit the mold of the true and tried who have been given these plum assignments. You see, he isn't a Yale law school graduate, which doesn't mean he can't do the job, but he doesn't even have any years of experience as an economist or a public policy maven. Actually, Brian Deese had never set foot in an automotive plant until very recently. So, one does have to wonder why he would be given such an enormous task of dismantling General Motors. Don't get me wrong, I know geniuses exist in our midst every day, but again, I question his ability to take on such an enormous task. This certainly isn't the Obama presidential campaign. This is a completely different ball game and the rules aren't the same.

His role is highly unusual for someone who is neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate, and who never spent much time perusing the endless case studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries. He is, by far, the greatest experiment of the Obama Administration and one that will be closely watched. His footprints will be on the new automotive industry that will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of years of mismanagement, inferior vehicles and a strong union influence.

Deese is the son of a political science professor at Boston College (his father) and an engineer who works in renewable energy (his mother). He grew up in the Boston suburb of Belmont and attended Middlebury College in Vermont. He went to Washington to work on aid issues and was quickly hired by Nancy Birdsall, a widely respected authority on the effectiveness of international aid and the founder of the Center for Global Development.

He wanted to learn domestic issues as well, and soon ended up working as an assistant for Gene Sperling, who 17 years ago in the Clinton White House played a similar role as economic policy prodigy. Eventually, Mr. Deese headed to Yale for his law degree. But his e-mail box was constantly filled with messages from friends in Washington who were signing up to work for the Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigns. Mr. Deese chose Senator Clinton’s.

“He was pretty quickly functioning as the top economic policy staffer through her campaign,” Mr. Sperling said. “He could blend the policy needs and the political needs pretty seamlessly.” On the day that the Clinton campaign ended, Mr. Deese left her concession speech and received a message on his BlackBerry from a friend in the Obama campaign urging him to sign on immediately to Mr. Obama’s team.

He resumed his policy work there, and found himself stuck in Chicago — unable to fly to Washington with his dog — as the economic crisis deepened. Finally, one night, he decided to get into his car with his dog and just started driving back to Washington. Tired, he pulled over to catch some sleep in the car. “I slept in the parking lot of the G. M. plant in Lordstown, Ohio,” he recalled. The giant plant, opened during G.M.’s heyday in the mid-1960s, is where the Pontiac G5 is produced. Under the plan Mr. Deese worked on when he arrived in Washington, Pontiac will disappear.
“I guess that was prophetic,” he said, shaking his head. Source: NY Times

Well, if sleeping in the parking lot of a GM plant is somehow a hint of what's to come in one's future, then I guess we all have to find that special parking lot and crash for the night in anticipation of walking into our destiny. Still I say that I am all for giving people the opportunity to prove themselves, but I wonder how adept will Brian Deese be at navigating the economic waters and charting the right course for General Motors and the automotive industry, in general. If you ask me, I would much preferred an experienced person at the helm than a neophyte.