Here comes the big parade:

On Wednesday, Obama meets with the chief executives of major corporations, while congressional Republicans and Democrats will talk separately with deficit-reduction gurus, including former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired a special panel appointed by Obama in 2010 to study the matter.

The president also will meet with those described by the White House as middle-class Americans who face a major impact from the fiscal cliff — higher taxes and automatic reductions in military and discretionary federal spending at the end of the year.

Obama concludes the week with a trip Friday to Hatfield, Pennsylvania, to visit a manufacturing operation and deliver a speech.

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner’s office announced Tuesday that congressional Republicans will hold a series of events in Washington and home districts across the country with small business owners to frame Obama’s tax policy as a threat to new jobs.
The series of events on both sides showed the high-profile tactics being used to demonstrate to the nation, including financial markets, that a deal can happen.

It’s nice of Erskine Bowles to agree to be used as Obama’s deficit reduction prop one more time, but I doubt any deal will do much more than kick the can past the next election.

Again.