The spectacle of the G-8 leaders in the bucolic verdure of Camp David, as they were strutting in their leisure attire capped by prudent sweaters against any non-fiscal Catoctin chill for photo-ops for those at home, could momentarily disguise what an appalling mess all the G-8 countries except Germany and Canada have made of the art of government. Not all the leaders who attended are equally blameworthy, of course. The French and Japanese leaders are new. Some — Mario Monti (of Italy) and David Cameron (of the U.K.) — have lightly ameliorated the desperate conditions they inherited; and some — Angela Merkel (of Germany), and Stephen Harper (of Canada) — inherited advantageous conditions and have steadfastly reinforced them, have been reelected, and probably will be again.

As a group, they are an interesting kaleidoscope of leaders of great nations toiling for their own political well-being and for the welfare of their 900 million people, in eight of the twelve largest national economies (Brazil, China, India, and Spain are missing, and would bring the population represented to over 3.5 billion — a majority of the world). They are like a cutaway drawing of Santa’s workshop, with each elf banging away in some purposeful task, yet conveying a slightly comical, portentous busyness.

At least this confected casualness is preferable to the former, ostentatious fun of the summiteer: speeding limousines hurtling to a stop as if conveying bank robbers transferring to escape helicopters, as well-upholstered and accoutered men debouch from their cars and bustlingly wrestle bulging briefcases up the conference-building steps for the evident benefit of all mankind.

For all history up to the end of the Cold War, summit meetings were historic and dramatic occasions, when leaders who controlled the destiny of much of the world met to change the world. Thus it was with Pope (Saint) Leo and Attila the Hun in 452; Henry VIII and François I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520; Napoleon and Alexander on the raft at Tilsit in 1807; Metternich and the heads of the Great Powers at Vienna in 1814–15; Bismarck and the Powers at Berlin in 1878; Clemenceau, Wilson, and Lloyd George at Versailles in 1918–19; Hitler, Chamberlain, and the others at Munich in 1938; Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945; and the post-war summit meetings from Potsdam through to the dramatic Reagan-Gorbachev meetings in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington, and Moscow.

Hugely important decisions, many of them disastrous and some dishonorable, were made at those earlier meetings. The previous meetings at Camp David, between Churchill and Roosevelt in 1943, and between Eisenhower and Khrushchev in 1959, were necessary and at least discussed serious subjects.

Now, the summit meetings are a proliferating taxation on the time of the participants and the attention span of the world. Almost nothing of the slightest note results from them, and they seem to take place almost constantly: the G-7, G-8, and G-20. (This last contains all those mentioned above as missing from the G-8, plus a sprinkling of geographic and ethnic affirmative action, no matter how practically undeserved, from the legitimately important Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, through Mexico and South Africa, even unto the shambles of Pakistan and the Evitaistic farce of Argentina.)

Even Brazil, Russia, India, and China — because a few journalists grouped them together as large developing countries and called them BRIC — meet, though Russia is a basket case, India is dysfunctional, and China is so secretive no one really has any serious idea what is happening there, and they have nothing in common with each other except life on earth. The supreme send-up of this whole self-serving roundel of summitry is the G-77, 40% of the nations of the world grouped together to demand Danegeld from the developed world as compensation for having backward economies beset by the carbon emissions of the advanced countries, led in the militancy of the extension of their cupped hands by China, the world’s foremost carbon emitter.

All the participants at Camp David except Germany and Canada — which have very manageable debt levels and whose economies are performing respectably — demand the borrowing and dispersal of vast sums of money, supposedly to generate economic growth. In this group, there are gradations of accumulated incompetence, as Mario Monti and David Cameron, called in to clean up after severely incontinent predecessors, are attempting to do some things that are useful, though Cameron waffled on a cleanup of the sacred cow of British national health care and his tax changes have been ambiguous.

Even more questionable is Mr. Cameron’s exhortation to the Eurozone, from which he has wisely kept his distance, to be a “firewall” of financial stability, i.e., for the protection of the United Kingdom whose post-Thatcher fiscal behavior has been on all fours with the mindless profligacy of most of Europe. Britain threw the doughty old Commonwealth over the side 40 years ago to leap headlong into Europe, and is now surpassed economically by Canada and Australia. It thought better of Europe and embraced the Special Relationship with America, until Obama flicked it off and gratuitously sent back from the Oval Office the bust of Winston Churchill (an honorary and half-American). Britain is a self-made orphan; it should try to revive the most promising parts of the Commonwealth, including India and Singapore, but probably only the brilliant new Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, has the imagination to think in these terms. Britain and Italy have fragile coalition governments, and neither may last long.

Japan, showing some signs of recovery from its very long torpor, has a new prime minister; more than three years after pressing the “reset button” with Russia, the U.S. has been snubbed by Putin, who wishes to assist a nuclear Iran and maintain full powers of nuclear intimidation for the Kremlin by not having to contend with a serious Western anti-missile defense (which Obama seemed to cave to on his open microphone at a banquet). Putin sent his deputy, Medvedev, to the G-8 to make the case for perennial Russian skullduggery (which doesn’t seem to change much under czarist, Communist, and post-Communist regimes).

Among the traditional Great Powers, the grand prize for purblindness goes to the inimitable French, who have elected an unmitigated cipher as president on a platform of sharply higher taxes, bigger deficits, indiscriminate pump-priming, and further concessions to the solid majority of public-sector employees and welfare recipients. A new page will be turned in flogging those who earn the money, and pouring largesse on the unproductive, regardless of merit. Never in its history, apart from the capture of the mountebank Emperor Napoleon III at Sedan by Bismarck’s armies, and when the Third Republic voted itself out of existence at the Vichy casino in 1940 under the jackboots of the returning German army, has France committed such an act of self-emasculation.

Since Medvedev isn’t a national leader, and Harper and Merkel have done well, and all but one of the others are relatively new on the job, the beaming host, the shirt-sleeved Barack Obama, was the only delegation head who had a moral duty to be ashamed of his performance in office. His administration has raised the national debt by 50% in three years while failing to generate a real recovery or move unemployment definitively below 8%, but all readers know that self-assessment is not Mr. Obama’s strong suit.

At Camp David this past weekend, the Canadians and Germans passed among the sick. The others have suffered skyrocketing entitlements, shrinking work forces as a percentage of society (compounded everywhere except Canada and the U.S. by collapsed birthrates), and an utter lack of will to tell it straight to their countrymen and sell strong medicine. All, without exception, have been delinquent in applying the formula of entitlement reform, stringent budget economies, revenue increases through taxes on elective transactions, and stimulation through income-tax reductions.

Greece will leave the euro and default completely; the French banks will require immense shoring up to protect the depositors (the equity-holders can use their bank-share certificates as wallpaper); there will be severe recalibrations in Spain and Portugal; and it will be very difficult in France and Italy. But Germany will enforce labor-market liberalizations and the incentivization of work and investment in the tax and benefit systems. And Europe, under German leadership, so long resisted when it was spread by armed force, but embraced now when it emanates from the factory and the treasury, especially if the old continent can regain the pleasant arts of reproduction, will begin to revive.

So will America, under its next president, when it addresses the public-sector deficits and its elected officials succeed in making the Constitution work again. It will all get worse before it gets better, but it will get better, despite these silly meetings of largely unsuccessful politicians.

From the National Review.