Opinion More (Steve) Jobs
Innovation not populism must be Obamas mantra for year 2
The most striking feature of Barack Obamas campaign for the presidency was the amazing,young,Internet-enabled,grass-roots movement he mobilised to get elected. The most striking feature of Obamas presidency a year later is how thoroughly that movement has disappeared.
In part,it disappeared because the Obama team let it disappear,as Obama moved to pass what was necessary the economic stimulus and what he aspired to health care by exclusively playing inside baseball with Congress. The president seems to have thought that his majorities in the Senate and the House were so big that he never really had to mobilise the people to drive his agenda. Obama turned all his supporters into spectators of The Harry and Nancy Show.
And,at the same time,that grass-roots movement went dormant on its own,apparently thinking that just getting the first African-American elected as president was the moon shot of this generation,and nothing more was necessary.
Well,heres my free advice to Obama,post-Massachusetts. If you think that the right response is to unleash a populist backlash against bankers,youre wrong.
Obama should bring together the countrys leading innovators and ask them: What legislation,what tax incentives,do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over.
And to reignite his youth movement,he should make sure every American kid knows about two programmes that he has already endorsed: The first is National Lab Day. Introduced last November by a coalition of educators and science and engineering associations,Lab Day aims to inspire a wave of future innovators,by pairing veteran scientists and engineers with students to inspire thousands of hands-on science projects around the country. Any teacher in America,explains the entrepreneur Jack Hidary,the chairman of N.L.D.,can go to the Web site NationalLabDay.org and enter the science project he or she is interested in teaching,or get an idea for one. N.L.D. will match teachers with volunteer scientists and engineers in their areas for mentoring.
The president should also vow to bring the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship,or NFTE,to every low-income neighbourhood in America. NFTE works with middle- and high-school teachers to help them teach entrepreneurship. The centrepiece of its programme is a national contest for start-ups with 24,000 kids participating. Each student has to invent a product or service,write up a business plan and then do it. NFTE works only in low-income areas,so many of these new entrepreneurs are minority kids.
In November,a documentary movie Ten9Eight was released that tracked a dozen students all the way through to the finals of the NFTE competition. Obama should arrange for this movie to be shown in every classroom in America. It is the most inspirational,heartwarming film you will ever see.
This years three finalists,said Amy Rosen,the chief executive of NFTE,were an immigrants son who invented a company to do tax returns for high school students,a young woman who taught herself how to sew and designed custom-made dresses,and the winner was an African-American boy who manufactured socially meaningful T-shirts.
You want more good jobs,spawn more Steve Jobs. Obama should have focused on that from Day 1. He must focus on that for Year 2.
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