Was it really worth the price of a Jaguar? The Delorean automobile looked pretty nice. It was burnished silver and had gull-wing doors like the ritzy Mercedes SL coupe of the late 1950s, but beneath the sleek skin was only a Renault – a sturdy little French design – or so the world belatedly discovered. It was hard to explain why no one had realized this earlier. Delorean had, after all, taken tens of millions of dollars from the government of Northern Ireland in order to manufacture a dream car and at the same time provide hundreds of new jobs. Why had it gone unnoticed that his factory was empty and that no one had been hired? And where, after all, had all the money gone? Please excuse a bit of word play you might find unbefitting the earnestness of the European endeavor. It does suit the case at hand.

Delors's sympathetic biographer, Charles Grant, coined the term “Deloronomics” to describe the weird conflation of cloudy theory and cris de coeur that steered his economic agenda. “Deloropolitics,” though no less accurate, is a little awkward for the other bookend. So why not use the euphonious “Deloreanism” to describe the whole kit and caboodle? No one would seriously suggest that Jacques Delors was a mere fraud like John Delorean, even though his scheme was every bit as unworkable as the scam of the fast-talking auto man.