Give GM to the people?

First, a short response to “two points.” The president, along with the Canadian government, gets to choose members of GM’s board. You may recall how the president forced the resignation of the last GM CEO. If you don’t think the government is running GM, or that politics will get in the way of business decisions there, well, whatever you’re smoking must be pretty good. Second, many people have offered other alternatives.
In fact, here’s one from Mitt Romney. He appeared on Fox News Sunday and suggested President Obama literally give the government’s shares to the people.

This is from a transcript of the program (available in its entirety here):
“MITT ROMNEY: President Obama should indicate that immediately upon this bankruptcy all of the shares held by government will be distributed to the American taxpayers and therefore that the public will be able to vote just like shareholders, and likewise that the UAW — the head of the UAW ought to to indicate all of our shares are going to our members, not to the head of the UAW.
We don’t want a president and a head of the UAW running General Motors. The American public ought to own that enterprise.
CHRIS WALLACE: So who would run General Motors?
ROMNEY: Well, the shareholders, the shareholders that — and you’ll see Americans trade shares, buy and sell amongst themselves. They’ll probably consolidate. There’ll be shareholder meetings. They can elect their board of directors.
And the company will be run to create products that Americans want, that can be competitive globally. They can hire and fire the CEO as they want. You don’t want politicians in Washington saying, ‘OK, we want to you build this kind of car,’ and, ‘Oh, that factory over here — it’s in Senator So-and-So’s district and you can’t close that one, even though it’s the high-cost factory. You have to open another one over here.’
You don’t want politics directing American corporations. That whole approach, which obviously is one that Barack Obama is wedded to, is the wrong approach for America. Americans recognize it. Individuals, the free market system, is what has built America to the nation we are, and that’s how we ought to go forward.”
I’m not sure I understand how, in practicality, this would work. But I do know that GM’s inability to respond to the free market led to its troubles, and it won’t ever be profitable again unless it figures out how to respond to the free market.
Will that happen under government ownership? Not likely.
What do you think?