Summit meetings like next week's G-20 in Cannes are something of a mixed bag for world leaders. Conventional wisdom holds that summits are politicians' cat nip--a chance to bask in their status and commiserate with peers. Of course there are also substantive policy matters on the docket, and the challenge of producing results worthy of all the fuss. As any presidential aide will attest, everyone involved in the process is thinking ahead to perceptions of the summit and asking themselves, "what do we want the headline to be?"
If the justification for these powerfests is to advertise diplomacy to ordinary people, this places an onus on President Obama and his colleagues. In a time of such widespread economic strain, we're bound to look at the summit pronouncements and wonder whether that's the best the world's most powerful men and women can do. Even so, it's important to judge this question by realistic standards for what agreements Obama and his colleagues can reach, or else it will only fuel cynicism.
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