In 2009, Ed Whitacre, former chairman and CEO of AT&T, came out of retirement at the request of President Obama, to take over the corporate reins at General Motors when the automotive manufacturer was on the brink of bankruptcy. GM reached record profitability two years later. In American Turnaround: Reinventing AT&T and GM and the Way We Do Business in the USA, Whitacre describes his unique management style, the process of turning GM around, and what shaped his career.

As voters in Michigan prepared to head to the ballots Tuesday, President Obama delivered a rousing speech to the United Auto Workers Union in Washington D.C., taking the opportunity to campaign on the success of the auto-bailout. Three years and some $80 billion later, the rescue of Chrysler and GM has remained fresh in the minds of voters in Michigan. However, the significance of the bank and auto bail-outs may mean something else — or perhaps nothing at all — to voters in other parts of the country.

Recap from It's a Free Country.

Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at It's A Free Country, we bring you the unmissable quotes from the morning's political conversations on WNYC. Today on the Brian Lehrer Show, Frank Rich, New York Magazine writer at large, discussed the Clint Eastwood Super Bowl ad and the politics around it.