Earlier this week, a broad business coalition that includes General Electric, Alcoa and Lehman Brothers opened a campaign for mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions, something the Bush administration has refused to establish. A few days earlier, there had been another push by influential organisations such as the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce to provide insurance for the 47m Americans who do not have it, something President George W. Bush started to address seriously only last night in the State of the Union speech. Could this be the start of a shift in how corporate America deals with the huge public policy challenges facing the nation?

The time is ripe. For the past six years, needed reforms in fiscal policy, social security, immigration and worker training have been the subject of bitter partisan fights and have gone nowhere. Now the Bush administration, with a public approval rating of just 35 per cent, is running out of steam. Meanwhile, a new Democratic Congress has yet to prove its effectiveness and cannot do much more than tee up issues for the next president.