Obama to pitch economic program at Group of 20 summit

[alp227]

Source: Wash. Post

President Obama, who has struggled to advance his vision for economic renewal at home, will take his pitch overseas this week to an audience of world leaders who could prove equally skeptical of his message at a time of deepening global anxiety.

“It’s very hard for us to preach the economic gospel to Europe when they watched our debt-ceiling debate here and our downgrade,” said Heather Conley, director of European programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Obama is scheduled to depart Washington late Wednesday for a two-day trip to Cannes, France, where the heads of the world’s 20 largest economies will gather for the Group of 20 summit. Organizers said the meetings will focus on how to contain Europe’s burgeoning debt crisis while also trying to forge consensus on a path to stimulating worldwide economic growth, even as many countries, including the United States, wrestle with painful budget cuts.

The trip, the first for Obama outside the United States since he attended a smaller summit in France in the spring, could provide a crucial test of whether his political problems at home have compromised his influence abroad.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-pitch-economic-program-at-group-of-20-summit/2011/10/28/gIQAvG2kWM_singlePage.html

[Cal Carpenter]

1. Wowza

From the end of the article:

"Still, the president is unlikely to get the kind of political boost from these trips that he did from his first G-20 summit in London in 2009. Then, the United States was in a recession and Obama, a new president, drew symbolic strength by standing for a photo with other heads of state as they pledged a multilateral response.

This go-round, that same “family-photo visual” won’t have the same emotive power, said Conley, the think tank analyst.

“How can that compare,” Conley asked, “to photos of Occupy Wall Street, the continued vigorous debate in Washington and our own questions about the unemployment rate?” "