It's clear enough what President Barack Obama hopes will happen now that Chrysler has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to midwife the company's rebirth as Fiat's robust North American partner.

If the president gets his wish, the judge tapped to oversee the Chrysler bankruptcy will quickly bless the work of Obama's auto team, ratify the agreements the team struck with Chrysler's workers and major lenders, and order the handful of hedge funds that rejected the auto team's terms to fall in line with other lenders.

Obama's auto advisers predict the whole thing will be over in a month, two at most. Chrysler will emerge shorn of its weakest dealers and suppliers but with its U.S. plants and jobs intact, its recalcitrant lenders defanged — and its new Italian partner incentivized to begin churning out the fuel-efficient engines and vehicles so conspicuously lacking from Chrysler's current lineup.

"This process will be quick," the president said. "It will be efficient."

Or at least, that's the plan.

But since when does the executive branch control what happens in the judiciary? The White House is likely overselling its own authority by promising a "surgical" bankruptcy process that will leave its grand plan for Chrysler unmolested.

The holdout lenders Obama vilified in his remarks Thursday are big investment funds with legitimate legal interests of their own. Their equity partners may well include pension funds other workers depend on for their own retirements, and an independent bankruptcy judge is obliged to consider their grievances with fresh eyes.

Other stakeholders also may see the bankruptcy process as an opportunity to press for terms better than the ones they negotiated with the White House, and their claims, too, may drag out the bankruptcy process.

For all this uncertainty, the Chrysler-Fiat merger the president announced Thursday appears to make sense for most of the constituencies concerned, including the U.S. taxpayers who will underwrite it.

The deal would give the UAW a 55 percent stake in Chrysler, at least for now, with Fiat taking 20 percent and the U.S. and Canadian governments 8 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Fiat would get the opportunity to increase its equity to 35 percent by meeting three objectives — introduction of a U.S.-manufactured vehicle averaging 40 miles per gallon; manufacturing fuel-efficient, next-generation engines at a Chrysler facility in the United States; and furnishing Chrysler with a network to market its cars outside North America. Fiat could bid for a majority stake in the merged company only after its debt to U.S. taxpayers had been paid in full.

The ambition reflected in the rescue plan is unprecedented, at least in this country. The White House aspires to save Chrysler from liquidation, establish a global automotive alliance, and leverage taxpayer dollars to advance Obama's industrial and environmental agenda for the nation, all at once.

The next hurdle? Finding out whether the U.S. Bankruptcy Court will be content with the cameo role the White House has assigned to it.