It’s not been a good week or so for the Morris’, Dick and Phillip, that is. Their futures are nebulous, perhaps up in smoke. Probably not the end-game either had in mind.
What’s that White House strategy, again? Triangulation? Inoculation? If Clinton ever gets his hands on Morris for nearly upstaging him after pushing him to “center” stage, perhaps strangulation?
So, then, what did we learn from the GOP and Dem national conventions? Maybe there’s something for the wireless telecommunications industry.
First, you have to look and listen real hard to tell the new Dems (a.k.a. Republican Lites or Republicrats) from the kinder and gentler GOP clan. Each party did a swell job trying to look like the other and papering over differences within their rank-and-file that will surface in months head. The mother of all infomercials, of all political advertising-the national conventions.
Second, party platforms are meaningless. What matters is who you stick in front of the network TV cameras that carry “the message” over the golden airwaves that help underwrite each candidate’s economic plan. In that sense, both are right. The campaign is about values, spectrum values.
Third, all of this-however meaningless and sanitized-is important. That networks chose to air a prime-time hour each night and whine about smooth convention scripting (boo hoo, Ted Koppel couldn’t find any controversy for Nightline), is-dare I say-journalistic arrogance and greed (the ratings game). And understandable.
If the economy is humming as Clinton boasts and 40 percent wireless growth suggests, why the anxiety? Why the stagnant wages? Is there room for more economic growth, as Dole contends there is, absent more deficit? Can inflation, unemployment and low interest rates be kept in check?
All are important macroeconomic questions wireless industry executives should be seeking answers for.
More important, perhaps, is the philosophical underpinning of each candidate’s vision for the future.
Dole’s supply-side plan is risky, but not nearly as bad as Clintonites say or even all that different from the Clinton-Gore playbook. If Morris had had his way, Clinton, too, would have proposed a tax cut just as he has co-opted so many other Republican issues.
Here’s how one economist sees it: Dole’s plan is a 1950s throwback that’s grounded in physical capital investment. Clinton believes in spending on human capital, which can return innovative ideas upon which new industries-telecom, computer, etc.-can blossom and create wealth.
