Ron Bloom - Public Image

Public Image

Bloom has been praised for his role in the Auto Industry restructurings and for his work as Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy. On April 29, 2010, he was named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World (in the category of World Leaders). In the Time 100 issue, Bill Saporito wrote that “his role in brokering the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler while preserving more than 100,000 jobs demanded a synergist who could work both sides of the equation with authority and respect.”

The Detroit News and a book by Bloom's boss Steven Rattner claimed that at the Auto Task Force's farewell dinner in July 2009, Bloom said of his government service: "I did this all for the unions." In testimony under oath before Congress, Bloom denied making the statement at all, even in jest.

In October 2009, political commentators focused on comments made by Bloom in 2008, namely: "We know that the free market is nonsense. ...We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun." While conservatives Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others juxtaposed Bloom's comments with details of Mao's violent dictatorship, liberal groups such as MediaMatters cited instances where conservatives had quoted Mao and where Stephen C. Shadegg claimed to have "followed the advice of Mao" in the 1960s.

Bloom's efforts toward automobile dealership closures was criticized for including "completely arbitrary factors"; American Thinker explicitly claimed that "objective measures...often got ignored in favor of politics".

• The New Republic Magazine: “Bloom…managed the negotiation that plucked Chrysler from its deathbed and married it off to Fiat, making him perhaps the most successful yenta in corporate history.”
• President Obama: “Distinguished by his extraordinary service on the Auto Task Force and his extensive experience with both business and labor, Ron has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead the way in creating the good-paying manufacturing jobs of the future.”
• An anonymous Obama Administration official, describing Bloom’s role in the Chrysler restructuring: “Ron has been the quiet force that relentlessly and aggressively knocked people's heads together."
• Matthew Feldman, lead bankruptcy attorney for the Treasury Auto Team: “In the course of the Chrysler negotiations, Ron maneuvered so that he was the fulcrum of it all. There were a lot of counterparties—United Auto Workers, Chrysler, the Canadians, GMAC—and they all sort of felt like when they hit a wall in bilaterial relations, they could go to Ron and he would find a workaround. Without him, I don’t think the Chrysler negotiations would have happened. People naturally looked to him as the person who can solve problems.”