PERINO: We’re going to weigh all options. I mentioned TARP, as that’s been something that you all have been asking about for weeks. And it’s just one of the options that’s out there, sure.

REPORTER: Can you describe the other options?

PERINO: No.

REPORTER: Is the Federal Reserve — cash from the Federal Reserve an option?

PERINO: I don’t know.

REPORTER: Will the decision be made this week? I mean, it’s Friday today. Or is next week –

PERINO: I don’t know.

It makes you think that the White House was the only player in this saga that didn’t prepare for the inevitability that the Detroit bailout would fail the Senate.

Under normal economic conditions we would prefer that markets determine the ultimate fate of private firms. However, given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options if necessary — including use of the TARP program — to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers.

Senate Republicans last night killed a proposal — supported by the White House and congressional Democrats — to provide a $14 billion lifeline to Detroit’s automakers. It’s not clear what happens now, but one thing is certain: President George W. Bush, if he can’t rally his own party to support his proposals, is running this country only nominally.

It was strange, then, to hear White House spokeswoman Dana Perino today deflect questions about the automaker bailout, claiming that “it’s really important to see what kind of support this can get on Capitol Hill.” From the official transcript of the press conference:

REPORTER: You don’t usually talk about which way the wind is blowing on Capitol Hill. What leads you to say — make a comment that support for this is a mystery?

PERINO: Well, I just, I think that it is. Could anybody here tell me how Capitol Hill is actually going to react to the plans that they put forward? I don’t think anybody knows.

REPORTER: Well, you usually don’t talk about the mood up there.

PERINO: Really?

REPORTER: What are you telling — what is the administration telling its — telling Republicans about this whole idea of the $34 billion?

PERINO: Well, as I said, we need a chance to look through the plans, Peter, so I don’t think that we can — I can answer that for you right now.

Further sign, if any were needed, that the White House seems to recognize its own irrelevance.

Democrats are urging passage of yet another stimulus package — reportedly in the $100 billion range — providing aid for states, the unemployed and Detroit’s flailing automakers. The Bush administration, though, has been steady in its opposition — a position reiterated Tuesday by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

“So far,” she said, “we have not seen something [from Congress] that would stimulate the economy right away.”

Last month, Perino suggested that Democrats could help the economy by dropping their long-held opposition to a trade-expansion plan with Columbia. According to reports surfacing today, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) rejects the idea of including the Columbia free-trade pact as part of the stimulus deal. From Bloomberg:

“The speaker has said that our first responsibility is to provide immediate assistance to the millions of Americans who are suffering in today’s economy, and with the worsening economic conditions, the need for a Main Street recovery and job creation package is now,” said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman. “That is our top economic priority and the Colombia free-trade agreement should be considered on its own merits.”

Citing unnamed Republicans, the New York Times reported Tuesday that Bush would drop some of his opposition to the Democrats’ stimulus plans in exchange for the Columbia deal — a claim Perino denied categorically.

“In no way did President Bush suggest that there was a quid pro quo when it came to Colombia free trade agreement or the other free trade agreements,” she said.

House lawmakers were expected to return to Washington next week for short post-election “rump session.” Without a stimulus agreement with the White House, though, they might just cancel those plans. Speaking to reporters Friday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) questioned the logic of returning to debate a bill that the president would veto.

“Clearly there is no point in us doing something if the administration is going to take the position that they’re not going to sign something,” Hoyer said.

President-elect Barack Obama said last week that a stimulus bill would be his first priority next year if Congress fails to act this month. It’s looking more and more like it’s a task that, by necessity, will fall to him.

It’s an unlikely spot for a conservative White House that once lived and died railing against big-government interventionism. But these are lean times — and no town knows this better than Detroit.

Indeed, faced with free-falling sales, it appears likely that General Motors and Chrysler — two of Detroit’s struggling Big Three auto giants — will be merging, perhaps within days. The companies want Washington to pitch in billions to catalyze the deal — and administration officials are looking ever more likely to oblige.

It’s not quite how Adam Smith imagined things. By definition, businesses suffer in recessions. And true-market capitalism, at least in theory, exists only by the rules of financial Darwinism — the enduring concept that weak businesses must fail to make room for the strong.

Yet asked this week if including the automakers in Washington’s bailout plans encroaches too far on private markets, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded incomprehensibly:

Well, I think what I would point you back to is that decisions on whether or not — that these companies have in front of them as to how they will move forward and how they will deal with these changing market conditions and changing consumer preferences will be ones that they make. What we’re doing in the administration is working with the tools that Congress has provided us.

So when it comes to loans for retooling the factories and their floors so that they can produces more energy-efficient cars, we’re working within those means that Congress passed for us to be able to do that. And the same is true when it comes to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, where we’re looking at that.

The confusion, to an extent, is understandable. Mulling the best strategy for partial nationalization of the once-proud auto industry must be no easy position for a White House that sold itself to America as a champion of free-market conservatism. But Detroit CEOs have taken their plight directly to the Treasury, which Congress recently gifted with sweeping power to scoop up any troubled asset that threatens the nation’s economic stability.

Congress might have thought this bailout would be limited to Wall Street’s failing financial institutions. But, at this point, who would argue that Detroit’s automakers aren’t troubled assets as well?

The evidence, after all, is striking. GM’s domestic sales have fallen 18 percent this year, and Chrysler’s are down 25 percent. On Wednesday, news got bleaker when GM announced an 11.4 percent drop in global sales for the third quarter alone. The question remains whether Bush officials will deem these automakers, like Wall Street firms, too big to fail.

For some members of Congress, the answer is a no-brainer. In an Oct. 23 letter to the Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Michigan’s entire congressional delegation urged the administration to use its powers under the financial rescue bill to save the state’s famously regional industry.

Every segment of the U.S. automotive industry –- automobile manufacturers, dealers that are engaged in sales of autos and light-duty trucks, and auto finance companies that provide financing to dealers and to consumer and commercial purchasers of vehicles -– is experiencing devastating effects that have resulted from the worldwide crisis in financial and capital markets and the freeze-up in credit markets. … In this current economic environment it is imperative that the government ensures that liquidity is restored, so that the U.S. auto industry is able to function until normalcy is restored to credit markets.

Not everyone, though, agrees.

Steven Pearlstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning business writer for The Washington Post, ran a piece Wednesday under the heading, “A Detroit Bankruptcy Beats a Bailout.” And an editorial in the Boston Globe Thursday points out that Detroit’s troubles go much deeper than the recent credit crisis. A historical over-reliance on gas-guzzling SUVs, for example, has disadvantaged America’s automakers as fuel costs have leapt in recent years. “A merger of GM and Chrysler would not fix these problems,” the Globe writes. “And federal backing for such a deal risks entrenching the status quo.”

Even Perino conceded this week that the failure of Detroit’s automakers is largely their own doing.

Complicating the saga, $25 billion in federal loans to help Detroit shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles could take between six and 18 months to arrive, the Bush administration announced earlier this month. To complete their merger deal, GM and Chrysler are requesting an early $10 billion from that allotment. They also want GMAC, their lending arm, to become a bank holding company, which would allow it to tap the $700-billion financial bailout program.

That merger could be finalized by Election Day, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, reporters might want to aim their questions about the administration’s bailout plans to someone other than Perino. Asked if any retailers offering lines of credit (Maytag was mentioned) would be eligible for bailout funding, the White House spokeswoman didn’t have the answer.

It’s a good question. It’s not one that I can answer, because I’m not part of the — I’m not an economist, that is a regulator looking at the Troubled Asset Relief Program. I don’t want to — I don’t think the White — I don’t think the White House would be open to that, but I just don’t know.

No wonder there’s so much confusion surrounding this program.

Instead of hitting the campaign trail this weekend, Bush plans to hole up at Camp David, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino confirmed yesterday. Asked by a reporter why, Perino barely even attempted a credible answer:

The president is pretty focused on the activities that we have here, especially getting this economy back in order. As we’ve said for a while, the president was going to be focusing on this. We canceled a lot of our fundraisers, and he’s going to focus on being with Mrs. Bush and others this weekend at Camp David.

She might have just say he wants to spend more time with his family.