I believe that Marty was saying it is too early to claim the bailout failed. Gm has not gone out of business, and while I would not place any money on gm thriving in the future, it is still within the realm of possibilities that they could. If the point of the bailout was to save gm from failing, you cannot declare the bailout as having failed unless gm fails. Likewise, you can't claim that gm won't pay back the money eventually as long as they remain in business. You can say the bailout is likely to fail, but that is hugely different from saying it has already failed.
So it's too early to claim success, but evidently not too early to claim failure.