The government made money off it, didn't they? I mean, all in all I don't know how you can criticize them for making what amounted to a wise investment.
Depending on which side your listening to, it either made money, or lost money, and I'm really not sure who to believe.
Honestly, the failure of those two companies probably would have made things a lot worse. Things would have reorganized themselves eventually, but it wasn't a good time to basically have our manufacturing industry crumble more than it already was. One thing that's sorta not relevant directly to this, but which seems to already be having an impact, is that Obama set national fuel efficiency standards. I think it's a fleet average of 56mpg, or somewhere around there. He also funded battery research and production. Those two things are probably going to really help the car industyr move forward.
Ideally, no, we wouldn't have bailed them out. But we weren't an in ideal situation, and we coulnd't treat it as such.