Meet America's New Car Czar

The person with the most power over the US auto industry is not an auto executive or union leader – not a member of Congress – not anyone in the Obama administration.

Thanks to President Obama's decision to allow states to impose their own emissions standards, the most powerful person in the industry is a former Clinton appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency: Mary D. Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board.

On Monday, President Obama directed federal officials to approve requests by California and other states to impose their own fuel-efficiency and emissions standards.

Since no automobile company will build one car for California and another for the rest of the country, the standard set by California and its 13 or so allies will become the standard for the whole country.

Ms. Nichols is the person who will be directing those standards. Appointed to her job by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007, Ms. Nichols has spent a year writing rules and regulations with a goal of reducing greenhouse emissions by 30 percent.

Ms. Nichols has consulted widely with industry and other interest groups. But of course, Ms. Nichols is accountable only to one state government out of 50. By subdelegating the job of environmental enforcement to her, the Obama administration has cut a majority of states out of the enforcement process entirely – and by the way, executed an end run around the federal notice-and-comment rules that give all Americans, not just Californians, an opportunity to be heard.

In another speech that same day, President Obama said: "We will make it clear to the world that America is ready to lead." In autos, at least, the sentence would read more accurately if he had deleted "America" and substituted "California."