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[交流] 【Pure water】Obama Recasts Asia Trip as Jobs Mission

Just days after American voters sent President Obama a blunt and angry message about their desire to see him do more to fix the economy, Mr. Obama was preparing to head overseas on Friday morning on a 10-day foreign trip to Asia.

The president will go to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan on a mission that will involve issues of global security, international trade and economics, improving cultural ties, preventing terrorism and some personal diplomacy. He will dine with foreign leaders, give a speech about Muslim outreach and attend summits on global finance.

But in the days since the midterm elections, Mr. Obama and his senior aides have found a much more simple way to describe the purpose of the trip.

It’s about American jobs, they say.

“The primary purpose is to take a bunch of U.S. companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America,” Mr. Obama told his cabinet Thursday, with the cameras rolling. “My hope is, is that we’ve got some specific announcements that show the connection between what we’re doing overseas and what happens here at home when it comes to job growth and economic growth.”

Mr. Obama reinforced that message Friday morning as he hailed what he called an “encouraging” jobs report that showed private businesses added 159,000 jobs to their payrolls last month. But he called that “not good enough” and promised to use his Asia trip to boost it.

“On the trip that I’m about to take, I’m going to be talking about opening up additional markets in places like India, so that American businesses can sell more products abroad in order to create more jobs here at home,” Mr. Obama said.

And just a day earlier, at a news conference with reporters, Mr. Obama made a similar point in answer to a question about how he might hit the “reset button” in regards to his relationship with business. The president mentioned the trip to Asia as an example of how his administration is doing that.

“The whole focus is on how are we going to open up markets so that American businesses can prosper, and we can sell more goods and create more jobs here in the United States,” Mr. Obama said. “And a whole bunch of corporate executives are going to be joining us so that I can help them open up those markets and allow them to sell their products.”

The simplified focus on jobs as a primary purpose of the Asia trip is no accident. More than 60 percent of the voters on Tuesday told exit pollsters that the economy was their number one issue. They said repeatedly that their anger was the result of a feeling that Washington had not focused on improving the faltering economy.

Broadly speaking, that’s something that Mr. Obama and his aides already knew. But the election sent a strong message that the voters are holding Democrats and the administration responsible for the lack of progress to increase job creation.

Mr. Obama conceded as much in his news conference Wednesday.

“They want jobs to come back faster, they want paychecks to go further, and they want the ability to give their children the same chances and opportunities as they’ve had in life,” Mr. Obama said.

The danger for Mr. Obama politically is that the images Americans will see coming from coverage of the foreign trip are not likely to clearly convey a focus on jobs in the American heartland.

Typically, such trips are filled with official pageantry and scenes that look more foreign than familiar. Indonesia, in particular, will be a challenge for the president’s message-makers. He plans to visit a mosque and will deliver a speech to what officials believe will be a very large crowd.

Ben Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, told reporters that Mr. Obama will speak about “democracy and development and our outreach to Muslim communities around the world, while also speaking of Indonesia’s pluralism and tolerance as well.”

Not exactly the kind of speech that is easy to connect to job creation in Ohio or Michigan or Missouri.

Later in the trip, the president will attend the G20 summit, which will give him a chance to shift the focus back to the economy. But such meetings with the world’s leaders are typically focused on the need to manage the global economy and international financial agreements — not subjects that sell particularly well back home.

In truth, the president’s mission at the G20 summit could have significant long-term impacts on job creation in America. The White House is hoping to announce a breakthrough on a South Korean trade deal, which could help America increase its exports and allow companies to expand.

“This agenda is critical to our economy back here at home, to our recovery and our ability to increase exports and create well-paying jobs here at home,” said Mike Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economics.

But even with American chief executives in tow, it will be hard for Mr. Obama to create a sense among Americans back home that the trip is for them. It won’t be until he returns from the whirlwind trip that he can get back to the business of convincing Americans that he is focused on the need to create jobs.

At the end of his news conference this week, Mr. Obama repeated his own frustration with feeling trapped inside the “bubble” of the White House. “Getting out of here is good for me, too,” he said.

It’s fair to assume that he didn’t mean halfway around the world.

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