I don’t know about you, but whenever the economy gets bad, my thoughts go back to past recessions and periods of unemployment. For me, those things coincided with graduation from college and law school. Bad timing for me (twice).

I fondly recall getting out of college with a very useful degree in history (!) and looking for a job during a recession. The college didn’t seem to care all that much and provided very little placement assistance. No one else seemed to care either, particularly the Republican administration of George H.W. Bush — this was the reason he was kicked out of office in 1992.

Anyway, I’m sure everyone saw this nice little photo of Wen Jiabao last week with a bunch of college students, talking about the labor market. Sure, it’s just politics, but kudos nevertheless. Someone in the government was smart enough to identify the issue as important, and then they followed up on it to ensure that a public gesture was made. It looks good and doesn’t cost you anything, so why not?

When you don’t have a job, everything sucks. However, if President Bush (or even Dan Quayle) had visited my school to commiserate with all the soon-to-be-unemployed grads, I would have appreciated it.