WITH billions of federal dollars flowing to General Motors, and with the incoming administration likely to discover that still more assistance is required, we can expect renewed calls for G.M.’s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, to lose his job as the price of failure. This view presupposes that Mr. Wagoner has not been willing to bring G.M. into line with the new global reality, that he has not designed cars Americans want to buy and that the company is a “dinosaur,” to quote Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama.

In reality, Mr. Wagoner has presided over the most sweeping transformation of G.M. since the 1920s. He has reversed management’s long practice of meekly going along with the demands of the United Auto Workers, notably with a deal to transfer health care costs to a union-controlled trust over the next two years.

During his tenure, as president, then as chief executive, Mr. Wagoner also put in place a previously unthinkable two-tier wage system to reduce the company’s average cost per worker; halved the company’s unionized work force in the United States through layoffs and plant closures; spun off Delphi Corporation, its largest parts supplier; and sold controlling interest of GMAC, its financing arm.

A decade ago, suggesting that Mr. Wagoner attempt these restructuring goals would have been ridiculed as unrealistic. But these moves have largely succeeded and by 2010 should strip $5,000 from the cost of every G.M. vehicle.