The central plot of the GM bailout continues to be the government’s game of chicken with the United Autoworkers Union.

In December, the Bush administration blinked and poured taxpayer money into GM even as the UAW refused wage concessions demanded by Sen. Bob Corker and Senate Republicans. The company, the feds said, had until March 31 to get its house in order. On March 31, the Obama administration blinked, pouring more billions into GM even as the UAW had stymied months of talks. The company has 60 days to gets its house in order or face bankruptcy.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .

This isn’t a GM bailout, it’s the UAW bailout. And the fact that UAW chief Ron Gettlefinger did not join GM CEO Rick Wagoner in the unemployment line should make that clear to U.S. taxpayers. Gettelfinger calls the shots in Democratic Washington. It was his threats to Congressional Democrats that made them fold their cards in the December stare-down. New GM CEO Fritz Henderson, a longtime Wagoner lieutenant, “made clear that he will use the full force of government backing to extract more painful changes from its union,” reported a credulous Wall Street Journal Wednesday. But the government has proven itself unable to resist the full force of the UAW.

On the Journal’s editorial page, meanwhile, Holman Jenkins has done some of the best reportage on the UAW bailout. This morning he reports that two years ago, Congress tried to strip out the “two fleets rule” [PDF] — a perverse section of federal CAFE regs that forces Detroit to make small cars in domestic, UAW factories, therefore rendering them unprofitable just as the government is trying to force the same companies to make more small cars.

“To no one’s surprise,” reports Jenkins, “two fleets was quietly restored by Rep. John Dingell and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (among others) as a political favor to the UAW.”

If Sen. Obama had no backbone to resist that small provision, how will President Obama force the UAW to tear up its union contract and pension agreements in the next 60 days?