On his recent visit to Europe, the President famously whined that Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi had unfairly sold too many luxury cars in the U.S., and that he would do something about it.

Now, I recognize that he was mostly fluffing his white-working-class base by confirming their prejudice that any setback for U.S. automakers must be the result of someone else cheating, but let's take his remarks at face value for the moment.

How many here agree that the Germans cleaned the clocks of Lincoln and Cadillac because of some sort of nefarious actions versus the idea that Lincoln and Cadillac just missed a fundamental shift in the market, aided by the crappy quality that was endemic in American cars in the 70s?