GE, Dow and Boeing executives talk U.S. competitiveness and partisan politics

“Nobody gives a damn about imagination right now, they only care about work,” Jeff, Immelt, president and CEO of General Electric said referring to the company’s old slogan, “Imagination at work.”

“So, now we talk about ‘GE works.’”

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Immelt delivered the remark during a panel discussion moderated by NBC’s “Meet the Press” host David Gregory on Monday at an event convened to gather new ideas and viewpoints on U.S. competitiveness from chief executives of three of the nation’s largest and most storied companies.

Immelt was joined by Andrew Liveris, president, chairman and chief executive officer at DOW Chemical; and Jim McNerny, president, chairman and chief executive officer of Boeing. The discussion ran the gamut from politics and policy to job creation and the current nature of global competition.

Why can’t Congress just get along?

The three executives were collectively optimistic about the future of American competitiveness, a predictable outlook given the declining (albeit slowly) unemployment rate. But they also pointed a collective finger at a current political climate rife with polarization and severely lacking in collaboration and consensus on policy initiatives critical to competitiveness and economic growth.

“The financial crisis promulgated a political backlash that produced a lot of regulation in the financial services area,” said McNerney, adding that the discussion then “splattered” over other sectors and that “the dialog with our regulators now tends to be more confrontational than it should be and more confrontational than it’s designed to be.”

“What I worry about is the political animal takes over,” said Dow’s Liveris at one point during the discussion.

The two-, four-, and six-year election cycle, Liveris said, breeds uncertainty, presenting all-too-narrow windows for compromise. Given this, McNerney predicted that President Obama and a GOP-controlled congress will reach a compromise only after the 2012 election. McNerney didn’t specify if he meant to predict that the president would win a second term, or if such compromises would come during the lame duck period immediately following the November election.

“That dynamic is just killing us right now, as a country,” McNerney said. “It’s ridiculous that we have to wait that long.”

A uneven playing field

Asked what government can do for industry leaders to incentivize job creation and, more broadly, economic growth, all three men agreed that a more hands-off regulatory model was needed. “I’m a little bit more of the regulate-us-properly-and-then-get-out-of-the-way kind of guy,” said McNerney.

But the “we follow the laws, leave us alone” approach, said Immelt, doesn’t fit today’s business zeitgeist, since U.S. companies such as GE, have had their U.S. competitors replaced by heavily subsidized companies abroad, particularly in Europe and China.

“I don’t really have American competitors anymore,” said Immelt. “Love us or hate us, I’m your guy.”

“Countries are competing like companies,” echoed Liveris. “We know it’s not a level playing field.

“We need the type of government that doesn’t give us a zero-sum answer of bringing us back to the country,” Liveris said, tagging back to the assessment that politicians, in their current approach to politics and policy, presented a barrier to continued growth.“We need to improve the quality of people who are regulating us.”