roosevelt passes the buck to bill knudsen. and he says, oh, by the way, bill, in order to do this kind of job, you're going to have no kind of authority whatsoever. there's no statutory authority for what is going to take place here. you are just going to have to sort of do this with your own powers of persuasion and through the business connections that you have in the automobile industry and all the industries that are connected and then supportive at the same time. and so this becomes bill knudsen's, shall we say, job offer. in may of 1940. and knudsen's response is dramatic. now, knudsen is a republican. roosevelt's a democrat. they have sparred and have been at opposite ends of the political camp for more than a decade. but when he gets that call, the first thing he does is to quit as president of general motors, move to washington and begin the process of figuring out how he's going to get this country up and running. for wartime production. and he, of course, now also realizes the obstacles that he faces. he's got, first