DETROIT - When the leaders of the three Detroit auto companies and the United Automobile employees union travel to Washington to make their case for a federal bailout, they will be flying into stiff headwinds of civic opinion.

Thus far, much of the observations in Washington, in the pages of major newspapers and on the Web, have been against as long as financial support for the companies, which they will say they desperately need in hearing beginning on Tuesday.

The waves of criticism have been so burly that Susan Tompor, a columnist for The Detroit Free Press, was enthused to write on Sunda's front page: "I never knew Detroit was a dirty word."

It is a remarkable shift for an industry that has long wielded substantial clout in Washington.

But that support has dwindled for many reason, leaving backers of a bailout, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, having a tough time creation their case that Detroit should be saved.

So how did the famous 1953 citation from the former General Motors president Charles E. Wilson - that what was good for our country was good for G.M., and vice versa - become a dated idea to so many people?

Analysts and longtime observer of the industry say a number of strategic missteps have hurt Detroit's standing.

The carmakers, for example, fought hard in recent years against two Congressional pains to raise fuel economy standards, at a time when Americans were struggling with more expensive petrol and had become more environmentally mindful.

They won the 2005 fight, when 67 senators, counting Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, sided with Detroit's quarrel that it did not have the technology to meet a modest increase.

But Detroit lost last year's effort to block an augment to 40 miles per gallon by 2020. Some senators criticize the industry's failure to sell cars like the Toyota Prius, which was built only as a hybrid - a vehicle that G.M.'s vice chairman, Robert A. Lutz, dismissed early on as a public relatives move.

Some Congressional hold has also dwindled because the automakers closed plants in other states, like Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Delaware, and consolidate their operation closer to home.

Meanwhile, foreign auto company have built plants across the South, picking up lawmakers like Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who now are more allied with the foreign car company.

Michael Useem, professor of organization at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said the lack of management from within the Detroit companies had hurt their effort as well. He pointed to Lee A. Iacocca, former chief of Chrysler, whose public profile soared after his company was given central loan guarantees in 1979, turning him into a 1980s equal of the popular businessman Warren E. Buffett.

While many Americans might know Rick Wagoner's name, "they couldn't tell you anything about him, except for that he's been there a while and his company has gone from bad to worse," Professor Useem said of the General Motors chief managerial. And one of the U.A.W.'s most prized accomplishments - charming income security for its laid-off members - is not helping the union as it argues for cash to help protect its workers at a time when employees across other industry are facing layoffs.

The U.A.W. program, called the Jobs Bank at G.M., provide nearly full pay for laid off workers while they waited for new jobs. A new version of it is less kind, but has left an impression in the public imagination of a place where workers sit around getting paid for doing zero.

"In good times, the public can tolerate the Jobs Bank," said Gary N. Chaison, professor of engineering relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "But in bad times, the public has very little endurance for that."

The Bush administration has steadfastly opposite giving automakers a chunk of the $700 billion banking bailout. While President-elect Barack Obama has said the auto industry should get help, "I think that it can't be a blank check," he said Sunday on "60 Minutes."

Michigan's Congressional delegation, led by Democrats Senator Carl Levin and spokesperson John D. Dingell, the industry's longtime champion, has been left to plead hardest for federal help. G.M. and Ford are among the heaviest spenders on lobbying, according to OpenSecrets.org, a Web site that track political donations.

So far this year, G.M. has spent $10 million on lobbying, out of $95 million in the past 10 years, insertion it at No. 16 on the site's "top spenders" list. Ford, which ranks No. 19 on the list, has spent $5.7 million this year, out of $80.6 million the last decade.

In arguing for a bailout, Detroit's automakers and the union have establish themselves without much help from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade group that was an significant player in last year’s fuel economy debate.

The group, whose 11 members include Toyota, BMW and Volkswagen, blocked efforts to impose even higher fuel economy principles. Its members support letting carmakers tap $25 billion accepted by Congress last year to retool aging auto plants, but the alliance has not lobbied for any extra money, a spokesman said on Monday.

That has left the Detroit executive and the union to go it alone.

Mr. Wagoner and Ron Gettelfinger, head of the U.A.W., appear on local TV in Detroit this week, but no Detroit legislative body landed spots on the Sunday morning talk shows out of Washington. Senator Levin was their main spokesman on NBC's "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" on CBS.

Meanwhile, Senator Shelby of Alabama, whose home state has Toyota, Honda, Mercedes and Hyundai plants, has kept up his force. Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, he called Detroit "a dinosaur, in a brains."

"There's not a bank in this state that would lend a dollar to this company," he added.

There have not been many reassuring words in newspapers, either. "Just Say No to Detroit," said a headline over an editorial in Saturday's Wall Street Journal by David Yermack, a commerce professor at the Stern School at New York College.

It all feels extreme to some in Detroit. "I didn't know that some really, really hate us," said Ms. Tompor of The Free Press.

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/economy/18rescue.html?hp