Get it in writing. And notarized. W/A pinkie promise.

Chief Executive

Is Washington Listening? President Bush’s New Policy on Competitiveness

It was pretty stunning to hear President George W. Bush come out so forcefully on the subject of U.S. competitiveness in his State of the Union address...

So what’s my reaction? It would be easy to be cynical about this pronounced shift in Bush’s focus some six years into his presidency, as he faces important mid-term elections. The fact that Exxon reported $36 billion in profits in 2005 may have forced the Bush camp to put down a marker on the U.S. “addiction” to imported oil, lest they be accused of being in Big Oil’s hip pocket. And he may have soft-pedaled on his push for democracy in the Mideast because, guess what, we had democracy in the Palestinian territories and they elected Hamas. Democracy in the Mideast, even if it’s ever possible, also isn’t going to address the concerns that Americans have about their own lives.

But let’s look at the glass being half full for a moment. As best I can tell, this is the first time that the Bush Administration has really listened to CEOs about shaping the national agenda. Virtually all of his town hall sessions with CEOs had been devoted to him telling CEOs what his vision was and why they should support it.

This feels different...

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said that "second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience." Maybe he was on the Business Roundtable, too.

There is one interesting piece not included above. Bill Holstein, CE's Editor, hopes against the government being "distracted by some new scandal or foreign misadventure." Wow. A new foreign misadventure. He actually said it. Wait. Let's not get too excited. Merriam -Webster sez mis-ad-ven-ture: an accident that causes serious injury or death to a person and that does not involve negligence, wrongful purpose, or unlawful conduct. Takes all the seeming sting out of it, eh? Still, props to Holstein for his modified limited hangout.

Also mentioned was a report I hadn't seen, with CEO/Chairman contributors like Craig Barrett, Norm Augustine and others: “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future” available free online from National Academies Press. (It's 500 pages but the front bits and some skimming yield stuff worth knowing - 16 pg exec summary here[pdf].) Chapter One has a sunny title: A Disturbing Mosaic in which the authors rightly don't completely buy Tom Freidman's lame and historically lumpy assertion that The World is Flat. Pack a lunch and give it look.