President Obama Meets Apple CEO Steve Jobs: What Will They Talk About?

(Oct. 21) -- For some it's a melding of two great minds. For others, it could be an unholy union of two evil control freaks. But no matter how you look at it, the now-confirmed meeting between President Barack Obama and Apple CEO Steve Jobs is big news.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today confirmed the rumor that the commander in chief and the chief executive of one of the world's most valuable companies are indeed scheduled to have a 30-minute private meeting today at a hotel in San Francisco. It's worth noting that it's just one of several high-profile Silicon Valley stops Obama's making, the others being Democratic fundraisers at the homes of Google VP Marissa Mayer and venture capitalist Steve Westly, respectively.

Obama has had a notoriously close relationship with Google, even inviting that company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, to be part of his economic recovery team (though it's been reported that the two have had something of a falling out lately). But his connection to Apple is less well-known.

So what brings two of the world's most powerful leaders together at this time? According to CNN Money, Gibbs told reporters that the president is "eager to talk to [Jobs] about the economy, innovation and technology, education." Interesting subjects, but all pretty lofty and vague. Surge Desk offers some hypothetical specifics:

1. Innovation and Economy

Few know the formula better than Apple (having just posted a record-setting $20.43 billion in third-quarter earnings), but the key here on the latter point might be Wall Street, where the Cupertino, Calif.-based company continues to play an increasingly important role in the overall health, stability, and growth of the market.

As The Street's Jason Schwarz explained earlier this year in a piece swooningly titled "Steve Jobs Leads Us to a New Economy":

The U.S. is leading the most significant macroeconomic revolution since the Transportation Revolution occurred 100 years ago. Many refer to this new phenomenon as the "tech revolution," but I call it the "Steve Jobs Revolution" ...

Twitter and Facebook, who both provide a filtered set of information, will prosper. And of course you've got Apple and the leader of the revolution, Mr. Steve Jobs. The dramatic rise in Apple stock thus far in 2010 is sending a clear signal as to where economic growth is shifting.

2. Education

Despite being a college dropout, Jobs has for most of his professional career been concerned with making sure American students have the proper technological tools at their disposal. As Lee Angelelli's old bio on the Apple founder states:

Jobs also recalled with special pride that he had helped introduce personal computers into education. ... To collect his thoughts one day, he took up pen and paper and began to write down the things that were important to him. Along with the development of the Macintosh, he listed three educational projects he had launched: Kids Can't Wait, Apple Education Foundation, and the Apple University Consortium.

That being said, Jobs is clearly a realist when it comes to solving America's public education problems (he doesn't want to abolish all public schools, for starters). As he told Wired magazine back in 1996 (a million Web years ago):

I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

3. Technology

Perhaps Jobs will be able to convince the president that the iPad is not a detriment to modern American democracy, as he (the president) seemed to allude to in a commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia earlier this year:

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said, according to AFP.

At the same time, it's worth noting that for all his anti-iPad bluster, Obama has his own officially-sanctioned app. Perhaps Jobs can give him some pointers on how to fine-tune it.

4. Campaign contributions

As Bloomberg BusinessWeek points out: "Jobs has supported Democratic candidates and organizations in the past. He donated $50,000 to the DNC in 2000 and $26,700 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, according to Federal Election Commission records. Jobs also contributed $1,000 to former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel when Emanuel was running for the U.S. House in 2004."

It probably wouldn't be the most presidential or even legal thing for Obama to pressure Jobs to keep up the generous giving to his party at the hour of desperate need going into the 2010 midterms, but at the same time, there's no doubt that the mere appearance of the man himself says something very powerful about Jobs indeed.

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