DON’T WORRY, BE CONFIDENT

President Bush’s economic summit in Waco Tuesday was billed as a trip to the “front lines” of the American economy. If so, it’s an awfully convivial battle zone.

The summiteers, a collection of some 250 entrepreneurs, corporate executives, investors, union leaders and workers of every race, religion and creed, theoretically represented a broad cross section of economic interests. In reality, it served as little more than a cheering section for the administration’s economic agenda.

No one should expect this president, or any president, to enter hostile territory knowingly – holding this summit at conservative Baylor University was a far more sensible choice than holding it at, say, the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party. But no one should be expected to believe that the broad cross section of economic interests is in unanimous agreement that the solution to the faltering economy is making the president’s 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut permanent, trimming business regulations, cutting the capital gains tax and drilling for more oil.

Dissent is good. In this situation – one in which a decade of profligate spending and ethical short-cutting by both the private sector and government finally collided with reality – the open airing of dissent would do more than all the symbolism at the White House’s command to convey the necessary message that the problem is serious and the answer won’t be easy. One example of submerged dissent already bubbling to the surface comes from participants in a summit work session on executive compensation. It apparently was quite a vigorous and contentious session, yet there was no mention of it in the summary papers produced for the president and, thus, no mention of it by the president in his remarks to the public.

In the administration’s view, the summit was far from the congenial gathering characterized in the press. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, for instance, said discount brokerage magnate Charles Schwab really stirred things up with the suggestion that the amount of tax-deductible investment losses be raised from $3,000 to $20,000. But it was Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill who captured the quintessence of conflict when he told The Washington Post that, “We heard a lot of really challenging ideas today. We had several people in my session tell us that not only should we make the tax cuts permanent, but we ought to accelerate the ones that are delayed.” Fortunately, the session never grew fully out of control.

If you could put optimism in the bank, this summit would have the country rolling in ready cash, it would be one big shining city on a hill, bathed in thousands of points of light, with corporate evildoers locked up alongside Osama bin Laden. The return of deficit spending, the future of Social Security, the cost of war and homeland security, the solvency of retirement funds, increasing trade imbalance and all the rest would be matters for someone somewhere else to worry about.