By Andrew L. Yarrow and Michael Rose

Now that all the public hand-wringing about whether or how to bail out the U.S. auto industry has been punted to the next administration, it's time to look at historical precedents and facts to see whether we have been asking the wrong questions about what to do with this industry. It could be that we've been ignoring lessons of the past and portents of the future.

Why bail out an industry that is poised, when the recession recedes, to build hundreds of millions more cars - maybe billions - over the coming decades, and yet has or should have no long-term future in its present form?

Environmentally and industrially, this would be a recipe for disaster. With soaring demand in China and elsewhere in the developing world, not to mention continuing U.S. and developed-world demand, even cars getting 50 or 100 miles per gallon still would devour impossible amounts of nonrenewable, ozone-depleting resources often from dictatorial countries. And our roads are clogged to an extent that only brings us lost time, greater frustration and lower productivity.

Instead of a simple bailout, we should be asking: How can we retool America's auto and auto parts factories to produce goods that we need, and can sell to the world, in the 21st century? Choose your own products and industries - sustainable means of transport, including mass transit and high-speed rail; solar, hydrogen or other green-power infrastructure and consumer goods; next-generation telecommunications hardware; etc. Although continued auto production is necessary in the short and long term, we can seize this moment to rethink our manufacturing priorities. When we fail to imagine ourselves 30 to 50 years into the future, we also fail to remember our experience of 50 to 65 years ago.

During World War II, government, business and labor successfully, collaboratively and rapidly converted auto and other factories to produce tanks, bombers, munitions and other material. This "arsenal of democracy" not only helped us win the war but also galvanized the U.S. economy to feats of productivity that launched generations of postwar prosperity.

We can collaborate again, retool as if we were on a wartime footing and timetable, and lay the groundwork for future American prosperity.

The U.S. auto industry can be steered in a new direction, providing jobs for people entering the workforce and for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost their jobs, thus revitalizing industrially ravaged communities and restoring hope to people now in despair. New technology and new opportunities can mean thousands of green jobs in a reinvigorated industrial sector built on an auto industry that can become the engine of change.

Similarly, amid all the talk of Detroit's uncompetitive wage-and-benefit costs, let's think back to the 1950 "Treaty of Detroit" between General Motors and the United Auto Workers - encouraged by the Truman administration - which ushered in America's mixed system of private and public pensions, health care and social insurance. Since that system, too, is broken and most recognize the need to revamp America's health care, Social Security and private pension systems, the new industries - built on public-private-individual/worker cooperation and mutual responsibility - could serve as a prototype of a new "Treaty of Detroit," under which the roles of government, employers and individuals in providing for health care/insurance and retirement security are radically reconceived.

A final missing piece in our historically myopic policy thinking concerns the role of big ideas. Turn the clock back to the 1939 World's Fair and GM's legendary "Futurama" exhibition. Here, on display, was a vision of America's postwar future: millions of cars and trucks on sleek, high-speed highways carrying people and goods from coast to coast. Futurama's vision - with a good bit of auto-industry lobbying - became the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, the great "infrastructure" precedent we all love to talk about. Rather than hanging on to this retro vision of America's future, why not fire up the American imagination again and create an equally visionary "Futurama" - a technological, industrial and social conception of the United States a generation hence?

This is hardly a piece of cake, whether in policy, economic, technological or human terms. The details of transformation would require careful, multifaceted thinking and enormous resources, and we all know who lurks in the details.

The auto industry shouldn't be allowed to die now; in fact, it is unlikely to disappear even in 50 years. But the transition can and should begin now. Worker and production dislocations could be minimized, as during World War II, by the strong support of government and a genuine partnership among government, industry, finance and workers.

Congress and the incoming Obama administration must get serious about forging farsighted industrial, energy and transportation policies that address the potential impact of unlimited growth of auto sales globally, our dependence on oil, environmental needs and the need for a strong, new industrial base. This plan must provide good jobs and social benefits to the widest number of Americans possible.

The U.S. government may have told the automakers to come back with a plan by March, but now is actually the time for our nation to devise a plan that is a road map for a sustainable future.

GM's 1950s CEO Charlie Wilson is often misquoted to suggest auto industry hubris and myopia, but - in thinking beyond the immediate bailout - his actual words may apply today: "What's good for our country is good for General Motors and vice versa."

Andrew L. Yarrow, vice president and Washington director of Public Agenda, teaches at American University and is the author of "Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenerational Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility." His e-mail is ayarrow@publicagenda.org. Michael Rose is an independent documentary filmmaker and automobile industry historian.