There is something about that familiar phrase, "White House summit," that induces mental fatigue and makes you realize we're in trouble.
Before leaving for a trip through many time zones to Asia, standing in front of a portrait of George Washington, President Obama announced that he is planning a jobs summit to be held at the White House sometime in December.
In a three-minute statement, just days after we learned the official jobless rate is 10.2 percent, highest in 26 years, and ten months after taking office, Obama said it is incumbent on him to try anything he can think of to put 16 million Americans back to work.
So it came to him, he said, that CEOs, small business owners, economists, labor union representatives, leaders of non-profit institutions and financial experts (if any can be found) should get together over coffee and brainstorm how to create jobs.
The key is how to do this in a climate in which an American who loses his or her job today has a smaller chance of getting a new one than at any time in modern record keeping. It's a climate in which employer-provided health care costs are expected to rise 160 percent in ten years. Currently, Obama said, employers are making do with temps and forcing current employees to work harder for lower wages but are not willing to hire more full-time employees.
In fairness, all presidents sooner or later decide to hold summits. Usually, the summits are on education or global warming or trade or male pattern baldness. Very, very seldom (never?) do they result in concrete action, a better society or even any basic agreement. But presidents are always thinking of their legacy, and there is no such thing as a presidency without a few White House summits.
Obama, by some counts, has held or attended a dozen summits in the past ten months. This is the same principle as appointing a White House czar for such problems as illegal drug use, soaring health care costs, energy independence, climate change, government regulations, lack of intelligence. At last count there were 28 czars in the Obama White House.
At the end of the jobs summit, where White House aides will carefully screen all the remarks beforehand, Obama will thank the participants from the bottom of his heart and announce that he has been given a lot to think about. (He said he is looking for "any demonstrably good idea" but realizes sometimes it's not good for the government to act and sometimes it is.)
The summiteers will depart for home in a glow and wake up the next morning thinking, "What was that all about?"
Obama says he wants more American innovation and less consumption by Americans although our consumption fueled the global economy. (So much for former President Bush's advice to go shopping after 9/11 and Obama's cash-for-clunkers program which was supposed to make us buy new cars to help the Big Three Automakers, although we mostly bought Toyotas.)
And while global trade is shrinking at its fastest pace in 80 years, Obama also hopes more Pacific Rim countries will buy more American goods, such as aircraft engines, Etch-a-Sketches, DVDs and wine refrigerators.
Obama insisted he has taken steps, such as bailing out banks, that have "broken the back" of the recession. But he added that while the economy is growing again, this has not translated into an end to job losses month after month.
It is one of those weird things about politics -- despite what they say, presidents have very little power to create jobs or boost the economy short of pushing Congress to spend money and pass stimulus bills. But they always get blamed if people are unhappy about the economy for very long.
Sadly, at election time, people don't remember the president's summits.
(Scripps Howard columnist Ann McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986. E-mail amcfeatters(at)nationalpress.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
WHITE HOUSE WATCH
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