In RenCen, CEOs tilt at windmills

My favorite joke has two Jehovah's Witnesses working a neighborhood when they finally happen upon a homeowner who responds to their plea, "Can I tell you about Jesus?"

"Sure," the homeowner says. "Come on in." Once they're settled on the couch, the homeowner asks, "OK, What now?" The Witnesses look at each other and shrug, "We don't know. We never got this far before."

I thought about those startled missionaries this week when I wandered to the "People's Summit" in Grand Circus Park, set up to protest the National Summit on the economy a mile away in the Renaissance Center.

As I walked up, a speaker was railing against "the corporate community that is responsible for the crisis in this country. What they're doing in the RenCen right now is an affront to all of us."

So I asked what they wanted. The answer: national health care; more spending on welfare programs; an end to free trade; punish the corporations; re-educate CEOs and slash their pay; nationalize industry; take from the rich and give to the poor.

They've won, and they don't have a clue how to handle victory.

The agenda espoused by these dreadlock-wearing, sign-carrying, slogan-shouting habitual protesters was once a quixotic quest, but now reflects mainstream thinking in Washington. The pinstriped set at the summit, asking for freer markets and regulatory relief, are the impossible dreamers.

President Barack Obama has spent far more time marching with the likes of the People's Summiteers than he has sitting across the table from CEOs, and his vision of America's future better aligns with the former than the latter.

Since January, corporate America has been a pariah in Washington. Business executives are saddled with the blame for the nation's collapse, and no one in charge is much interested in hearing their ideas for fixing things. Corporate chiefs are the new disenfranchised class.

"They've been steamrolled by the popular express," says Lou Anna Simon, president of Michigan State University.

And that's a tragedy. Because there were some solid, common-sense solutions for reviving America put on the table this week in Detroit. The brain power gathered in the RenCen's silos could have moved a mountain, if anyone had been listening.

In normal times, this line-up of CEOs would have drawn overflowing crowds of wisdom seekers. But many of the sessions were sparsely attended, despite featuring some of the nation's top corporate bosses.

Business doesn't matter in the upside-down world in which we live. Government has all the answers, all the money and all the muscle. Critical decisions are being made about the future of industry without the input of industrialists.

In a heartbeat we've moved from a nation that worships entrepreneurship, innovation and the freedom to succeed to one that craves the false security of an economy carefully contained by the government.

The CEOs acknowledged their diminished status and the danger of making the word "corporate" as pejorative as communist was 60 years ago, particularly for a nation that must encourage its youth to become engineers, entrepreneurs and executives if it hopes to avoid becoming the servant of more enlightened economies.

"We're got to make it cool again to be in business," Ford CEO Alan Mulally said. "Industry is the source of all wealth creation for everybody."

The power really is to the people. But it's not the people, at least not the sign toters in Grand Circus Park, who will rebuild businesses, create jobs and return America to a level of prosperity that lifts all boats.

Those people were in the RenCen tilting at windmills.

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News. His column runs on Sunday and Thursday. Try (313) 222-2064 or nfinley@detnews.com">nfinley@detnews.com.