In this late summer stretch, caught between conventions, curious announcements are popping up.

Just after I filed last week’s column  on Chai Feldblum’s efforts, President Bush issued a news release urging Congress to “pass legislation giving American workers more options to help families better juggle the demands of work and home through comp-time and flex-time.”

Uncanny. Actually, he warms up like this: “These are exciting times for our country. It’s a time of amazing change. The economy is changing. The world is changing. We need to make sure government changes with the times and to work for America’s working families.”

I don’t quite follow the last part, but the stumping makes me feel good, which is all that matters.

Bush flashed some compelling stats:

• In 2002, women accounted for more than  47% of the labor force, up from 29% in 1950.
• In 2002, the labor force participation rate for married mothers with children under 6 was more than 63%, up from 11% in 1950.
• In 2002, over 71% of all mothers with children under 18 worked.
• In 2002, 18.4 million married families with children, almost 68%, had both parents working. In more than 55% of these families, the women were working full-time, year-round.

Then the president called on Congress to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to give private-sector employees the option to choose comp time over overtime pay, and the ability to “flex” their schedules over a pay period - benefits government employees already enjoy, he says. To protect employees, the program should be voluntary and honor collective bargaining agreements. Oh, he even toots the telework horn a bit, what the heck?

So what about Feldblum? Should she and her team at Workplace Flexibility 2010 just pack up and go back to Georgetown?

Probably not. Here’s her e-mail response, edited for length. (Note, she is not on vacation.)

“It’s great that President Bush is raising the issue of workplace flexibility and proposing some ideas. Similarly, I think it’s great that Sen. John Kerry is acknowledging the squeeze on working families and proposing (as he did in his acceptance speech) greater governmental financial support for after-school care.

”But both sets of ideas reach only small pieces of the overall problem - which is why we’re trying to bring the bigger picture into focus.