Barbara Kiviat
Time

The Obama Administration is out to create jobs. Let's not get our hopes up.

The day before the Labor Department announced a second month of 10%-plus unemployment last week, the White House hosted a get-together to hear from executives, labor leaders and academics about how the Federal Government can jolt job growth. "We're looking for fresh perspectives," the President said. "I am open to every demonstrably good idea."

That may sound promising, but the truth is, drumming up new jobs on short notice isn't exactly in the government's wheelhouse. In the long term, what the government does and doesn't do is incredibly important to the health of the labor market. Trade policy, corporate tax rates, the structure of health care — these things all have a real impact on economic growth. But Washington's tool kit doesn't work nearly as well in the short run. Right now companies aren't hiring for a very specific reason: there's not as much demand for their products and services. Callous as it may sound, high unemployment at the front end of an economic recovery is perfectly normal.

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Reporter's Note: President Obama will attend the global climate summit in Denmark. I hope he can get my daily letter to the White House while on the road.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

Let me be candid. I am not particularly convinced that this Climategate issue is all that some folks are cracking it up to be. I’m sure you’ve heard how some scientists swapped e-mails which seemed to suggest they were massaging data to support claims for global warming. “Massaging,” being a nicer word than manipulating. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Maybe we’ll find out for sure once the investigations are done. Maybe we won’t. Maybe my living room will melt tonight and it won’t matter.

Whether these guys played footsie with the facts or not doesn’t worry me much. So many scientists have studied this business of the planet getting hotter, that unless we find a much deeper and broader conspiracy at work, I don’t think the entire field of research should be unduly tainted by this episode.

What does concern me, is the ancillary notion that scientists would be pursuing a political agenda at all; that we even have pro-global warming and anti-global warming camps. I really believe in the power of science. I believe it can help us understand our world, can help us define and deal with our problems, and one day will possibly even explain why hula-hooping remains an insurmountable challenge for me.

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Reporter's Note: President Obama is the first president I’ve ever known who is younger than I am, if only by a bit. So you might consider my letters to the White House the advice of an elder. You might, but I think that would be stretching it.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

I have just ended a magnificent day. I mentioned in a previous letter that it was my birthday, and now I feel I really must elaborate. This was my 50th birthday. In addition, my wife and I share the same birthday. No kidding. So when we heard that our beloved Saints were coming here to play against the Washington Redskins on our birthday, we decided that as our gift to each other, we would get tickets for our two teenage daughters and ourselves and go. Mind you, this was a couple of months ago, when it was no one imagined that the Saints would still be undefeated by the time they arrived.

The game was cold and as you might have heard, extraordinary. The Saints, quite frankly, did everything wrong. Their offense was off key; their defense like a sieve. The Redskins played as if they were the unbeaten team; marching down the field time and again on offense, and hammering the boys from the bayou when the Skins were on defense. Yet, period after period, the Saints stayed around; persistently trailing in the points, but staying at least vaguely within striking distance.

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Princeton professor Julian Zelizer says some comparisons of Vietnam and Afghanistan have merit.

Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN

On June 17, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson explained to The New York Times reporter James "Scotty" Reston why he had to stay the course in Vietnam by stabilizing the South Vietnamese government so that it could fight communism.

Johnson rejected calls for withdrawal that were being made by liberal Democrats as well as the proposal for neutralization promoted by France's Charles de Gaulle.

"So the only thing you've got left," Johnson said, "is try to make this thing more efficient and more effective and hold as strong as you can and keep this government as stable as you can and try to improve it as you can and that we're doing day and night."

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Reporter's Note: President Obama’s new plan for Afghanistan is being chewed over on the Sunday political talk circuit. Me? I’m going to the Saints game…but first I’m posting my latest letter to the White House.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

Near a little diner that we like called the Georgetown Grill, there is an intersection where I found twenty dollars in the street a couple of years ago. It was a rainy day, rush hour traffic was buzzing all around, and I was ambling through a crosswalk when I looked down and saw it lying flitter-flat, soaking wet on the pavement. Good luck, huh?

The problem is, ever since I have been unable to walk past that spot without reflexively looking around for errant Jacksons. It’s become a family joke. “Keep a sharp eye kids, this is where the money grows wild!”

I mention this because I’ve been thinking a good bit about your speech on Afghanistan last week, especially the part where you emphasized that this was a haven for the 9/11 attackers. No question about it. Those Al Qaeda types enjoyed some pretty choice conditions for a while there for plotting and planning their schemes, and probably they’d be pretty happy to take up residence again if the Taliban seized control and would have them.

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Reporter's Note: I have not seen President Obama at the mall, which makes me wonder how his Christmas shopping is going. Mine is progressing pretty well; as is this continuing series of letters to the White House.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

Getting the ghost out of our attic is not going to be easy. I have seen him (or her, I’ve never been that good at seeing the supernatural) peeking shyly from the ornamental window at the highest corner of the house for almost two months now, and even though she/he makes no noise, just the idea of…it….being there has started to trouble me. Of course, it should not. After all, I put it there.

Every October, I crawl through a narrow attic passage on a board over the joists, trying not to disturb the insulation as I wriggle through, balance on a pair of beams, step to the window and slip the lighted, plastic ghost into place. Then in early December, I make the journey again to take the ghost down and hang a huge (and heavy!) lighted wreath outside the same window. Anyway, we’ve got to make the switch this weekend and I’m not looking forward to it.

There are many chores this time of year that are a bit of a struggle to take on, and I’m sure you must be more than usually overwhelmed with the prospect of Christmas shopping. So I decided to help out with a little gift suggestion list for some of those closest to you. Considering our economic times, I’m going with a blend of practical and pleasant.

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Reporter's Note: President Obama’s team continues to take heat over how those party crashers made it into the White House. And I continue to write letters.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

It is fully possible that in your headlong rush to the White House that you have never spent much time thinking about Musk Oxen. But not being burdened with that whole “Leader of the Free World” responsibility, this is a subject I have considered at some length, and I want to tell you a bit about them.

Musk Oxen live in the north. Farther north than the Green Bay Packers. On the arctic tundra. They look like very shaggy, sturdy, long-haired cattle, with impressively stout, and pointy horns. They weigh up to eight hundred pounds and if one were standing in front of you right now your head would be just barely above the hump of his shoulders. (Not for long, of course. They can be rather ill-tempered, and I suspect you would be on the run faster than you can yell, “Hey, Biden, is this your dog in the Oval Office?”)

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Fareed Zakaria says that the United States may in fact be scaling down the goals of the military operation

Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor

When President Obama announced plans Tuesday to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, it appeared to be a major escalation of the war in that country. But, foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria says that the United States may in fact be "scaling down" the goals of the military operation.

In an interview with CNN, Zakaria gave the new plan a good chance of succeeding in achieving its more limited objectives. But he said Obama's idea of setting a target date for starting to draw down U.S. troops was a strategic mistake - though he suggested the president may have needed to do so for political reasons.

Zakaria, author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria: GPS," spoke to CNN Wednesday.

CNN: The president outlined an intensive but short-term boost of the military resources in Afghanistan. He didn't call it a surge but is this effectively the same as the Iraq surge?

Fareed Zakaria: Actually I think this is a different surge than the Iraq surge. And not enough people have noticed that - because the president did increase the number of troops and in fact, in many ways the number of troops that he has increased in percentage terms is much larger than the Iraq surge.

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Fawaz A. Gerges
Special to CNN

President Obama's decision to deploy an additional 30,000 soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan by early 2010 was not a surprise. In Obama's War Cabinet meetings, the question was not whether to send more troops but how many.

Obama's second major military escalation of the conflict this year, the largest single U.S. deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will bring the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to almost 100,000. There are also 50,000 NATO troops stationed in the country.

Notably, there will be as many troops in Afghanistan as in Iraq at the height of the war between 2003 and 2008.

In his televised speech Tuesday, Obama stressed the limits of the American presence in Afghanistan and set a goal of starting to bring forces home after only 18 months.

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Reporter's Note: President Obama is hosting a jobs summit as the White House today. Uh, but don’t bother trying to drop off your resume. I don’t think it’s that kind of meeting.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

With all respect to the seriousness of your concerns about health care, and the climate, and Afghanistan, I must say it is a relief to see you are holding a forum at the White House today about jobs. As my mother said when I moved out of the house, “About time!”

This employment situation (or at least the “un” part) is one of those structural problems that will undermine everything else you want to do until you get it under control. It’s kind of like a bass player in a band. As long as he is doing everything right, nobody notices him; but if he starts screwing up, it ruins the whole gig. And if he doesn’t pitch in to pay for the pizza, he’s definitely out of the group. Remind me to tell you some good bass player jokes when you call…

In any event, no doubt you’ve noticed protests around the country over jobs, and you’ve heard the rumbles among some of your fellow Dems about organizing a march on Washington. It seems to me that organizing a job fair would be more useful and could send the same message; after all, how the heck do you fill out a job application while marching down the street holding a sign? Maybe each protestor can use the person in front of him or her as a desk. You can send Biden out to hand out pens.

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