WASHINGTON-Despite splashy headlines of multibillion dollar telecom deals, wild dot-com stock swings on Wall Street and all the hot-button digital issues that have GOP and Democratic policy-makers crawling over each other to champion, it is virtually impossible to distinguish the high-tech policies of Republicans and Democrats this election year.
For the moment, anyway, voters are not apt to find bright-line, defining differences between George W. Bush and Al Gore-the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates-when it comes to some of the key cutting-edge issues of the day: Internet taxation, privacy, China trade and high-tech visas.
The issues are gaining in importance for industry as wireless and Internet technologies converge.
“It is a distinction without a difference,” said Adam Thierer, a fellow in economic policy for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here. Thierer and others are fond of saying telecom and high-tech issues tend to be nonpartisan.
While that is generally true, differences exist at the margins.
Indeed, high-tech policy could veer in different directions depending on which party comes to occupy the White House after the Nov. 7 vote.
On the surface, high-tech policy differences between the two political camps are more likely to be found in subtle, nuanced forms that themselves flow from a fundamental philosophical line dividing Republicans from Democrats: the role of government.
Democrats, even New Democrats of the Clinton and Lieberman mold, believe government can play a part by investing in America’s high-tech future via government spending on research and development and on pilot projects and by writing laws and regulations that protect consumers and competition.
Republicans tend to have greater faith than Democrats in the free market insofar as innovation and wealth creation, pointing to the great success of the unregulated computer industry as a prime example.
Democrats counter that while the Internet is unregulated, the seeds of its creation were planted with federal dollars.
High-tech visas and China trade are much tricker for Gore-Lieberman than for Bush-Cheney.
In tackling both initiatives, the Gore-Lieberman ticket is challenged with doing it in such a way that will not offend a powerful left-of-center constituent, known as organized labor. That might mean a Gore-Lieberman administration would be more likely than a Bush-Cheney White House to try to attach environmental and labor riders to a U.S.-China trade bill that holds great promise for the U.S. wireless industry.
Or, perhaps to ease the shortage of high-tech workers, Gore-Lieberman would settle for a less ambitious increase in the number of H-1B visas than would Bush-Cheney to assuage to union leaders, like those doing battle with Verizon Communications.
A Bush administration, according to conventional wisdom, could be counted on to relax scrutiny on telecom mergers-especially at the regulatory level where Democrats that control the Federal Communications Commission have been inclined to attach conditions to approval of telecom deals after lengthy, excruciating reviews.
One might even expect a GOP-controlled FCC to look favorably and act swiftly to lift the 45 megahertz spectrum cap-a rule intended as an antitrust check to prevent any one mobile phone carrier from dominating a given market.
At the same time, wireless industry efforts to gain access to additional frequency bands for third-generation mobile phone systems could run into trouble in a GOP administration.
If studies show, for example, that relinquishing the 1.7 GHz spectrum (one of the bands approved for 3G at the World Radiocommunication Conference in June) is tactically too costly for the Pentagon, a Bush-Cheney White House would have to listen. The GOP ticket has criticized the military build-down under Clinton and has promised to rehabilitate U.S. armed forces.
But Bush-Cheney would have to weigh any decision favoring Pentagon retention of 1.7 GHz frequencies against the prospect of losing billions of dollars from 3G spectrum actions-money likely needed to offset the kind of tax cuts that are a cornerstone of the GOP presidential campaign.
While a Bush administration likely would exercise less aggressive antitrust oversight than a Gore White House, it appears no one can save Microsoft Corp. from a breakup engineered by the Clinton Justice Department.
There is a curious paradox to the quiet treatment of high-tech this election year.
On the one hand, high-tech issues-owing in part to the widespread embrace of the Internet, mobile phones and other digital gadgets and to economic prosperity of the New Economy-occupy top spots on policy agendas at the White House, in Congress and at regulatory agencies.
But presidential speeches do not reflect that reality, even though GOP and Democratic politicians want to ride the digital wave and take credit for high-tech advancements that sometimes have little or nothing to do with laws or regulations passed in the nation’s capital.
High-tech policy-makers, to some extent, have been reduced to cheerleaders.
Backing the Internet sales tax moratorium or voting for digital signatures are very low-risk propositions, yet ones with the potential to pay huge dividends for Republicans and Democrats.
But as big as high-tech has become in the everyday lives of Americans, the many issues associated with it do not resonate with rank and file voters-certainly not in the way health care, Social Security, prescription drugs for the elderly or education hit home.
The closest thing to a popular high-tech issue-one which has proved remarkably successful for the Clinton administration-is the `Digital Divide.’
Clinton-Gore efforts to ensure that low-income, minority and rural citizens share in the benefits of the Digital Age represent a brilliant fusion of high-tech and popular Democratic themes with a built-in attack shield.
Clearly, Bush, a self-proclaimed compassionate conservative attempting to draw more folks into the Republican tent, is in no position to oppose bridging the Digital Divide.
The politicization of the Digital Divide issue is a slight variation of the E-rate, discounts on Internet hook-ups for schools, libraries and rural health care centers. Gore pledged to link every school to the Internet by 2000, and the legal foundation to make it happen was included in the 1996 telecom act passed by the GOP-led Congress.
While Republicans are boxed in and cannot bash the telecom-social program they voted for, they have chosen to criticize the Democratic FCC’s implementation of it.
The wireless industry, with limited success, has tried to capitalize on Digital Divide and E-rate programs of the Clinton administration.
Given that high-tech does not register with voters outside the Beltway and Silicon Valley, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Thierer, there is no need for the presidential candidates to differentiate themselves on high-tech issues.
As much as Gore loves to delve into high-technology policy, he’s learned it is not particularly a winner insofar as reaching traditional, blue collar Democrats. Witness his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday night.
For a man who eats, sleeps and breathes high-tech policy and whose close advisers double as high-powered telecom lobbyists, references to high technology were minimal in his speech.
The de-emphasis on high-tech in Gore’s speech, in fact, reflects a struggle within the Democratic Party between core Democrats of the Old Economy and New Economy suburbanites.
While there’s little doubt high technology will have a place in a Gore administration, the level of emphasis will probably be determined by how the internal power struggle between liberals and centrists within the Democratic Party plays out.
Another wild card, regardless of who wins the presidency, is Congress. If Democrats oust Republi
cans from the House, top committee chairmen are expected to come from the liberal side of the party. Such Democrats are prone to weigh the consumer and competitive implications of telecom legislation.
On the other hand, some say it has become impossible for policy-makers to keep pace with high-tech. The calculus has changed, they say. The marketplace is now calling the shots. Policy-makers are taking their cues from industry.
