Is Washington listening?

It was fair stunning to hear President George W Bush tackle the control of U.S. competitiveness in his State of the Union address. That was the theme of our CEO Leadership Summit described in our January-February issue, and also the theme of my Editor's Note. I'm not below any illusion that the leader of the unrestrained world is reacting to Chief Executive. Rather, I think we have captured the zeitgeist of corporate leaders, and that's what the president was responding to.

thus what's my reaction? It would be easy to be cynical about this pronounced shift in Bush's focus a certain quantity of six years into his presidency, as he faces important midterm elections. The fact that Exxon reported $36 billion in profits in 2005 may have forced the Bush camp to bring down a marker on the U "addiction" to imported oil, for fear that they be accused of being in Big Oil's hip pouch And he may have soft-pedaled upon his push for democracy in the Mideast because, gues what, we had democracy in the Palestinian territories and they selected Hamas.

But let's direct the eye at the glass being half filled for a moment. As best I can run over this is the first time that the Bush Administration has really listened to CEO about shaping the national agenda. Virtually all of his townhall sessions with CEO had been devot to him telling CEO what his vision was and wherefore they should support it.

This have feelings different. It was in reply to executives such as Craig Barrett of Intel, John Chambers of Cisco and Norman Augustine, formerly of Lockheed Martin, that Bush said he would accelerate spending upon basic scientific research. Augustine helped lead a sky-colored ribbon group that produced the report entitled "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future" (If you haven't read this report, you should. It's available at www.nap.edu.)

with equal reason granted, Washington is corrupt and debased, and it's entirely possible that political leaders will be distracted by dint of some new scandal or foreign misadventure. on the other hand there appears to be an opening. Legislation has smooth been introduced called the patronize America's Competitive Edge Act. It may be possible that we're seeing a shift in the national political consensus, individual that will be reflected not single in midterm elections but also in the presidential election in 2008 CEO should maintain the crushing on leaders of both the Republicans and Democrats to hold moving in the right direction. That doesn't mean just lobbying. It requires genuine intellectual leadership.

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