In fact, while some manufacturing jobs have been lost due to foreign competition, many more have been lost simply because of slow growth in demand for manufactured goods.
With automakers racing to develop the most efficient, environmental friendly cars with minimal emissions, the concept of turbine-powered electric vehicles is not new.
Yet neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney promotes himself as tool savvy presidential timber, in the mold of a Jimmy Carter, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker.
The damage to skill and craftsmanship—that's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor—went largely unnoticed.