Oh thank heaven for Eleven-7. Election Day 2000 is here, mercifully. This presidential marathon, which has become totally corrupted by big money, cynicism and apathy, has become a caricature of itself.
During the campaign, we learned very little from Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush about how telecom and high-tech policies would be shaped by the next White House. About all we got were a few perfunctory statements about the need for more research and development and keeping the Internet unregulated. This is interesting in view of dire predictions about the U.S. losing next-generation Internet-wireless Internet-to Europe and Asia.
Though high-tech is given much credit for the record economic expansion and the New Economy, Gore and Bush were largely mum on high-tech. But for completely different reasons. Gore loves high-tech discourse, but would have tortured citizens if left unchecked. So he was silenced on this score by wise handlers.
Bush, though governing in a high-tech mecca called Austin, would have had as much luck talking about spectrum, servers and software as he did trying to name foreign leaders. He too was muzzled. Except for this gem: “Will the highways on the Internet become more few?”
So which candidate suits high-tech best for the next four years?
Both Bush and Gore appear to have garnered a fair share of high-tech endorsements. Gore knows high-tech policy better than Bush ever will. But with Bush, you’re guaranteed less government interference and less chance of high-tech being used to leverage social objectives. Bush is more a free-market man than Gore will ever be.
On the other hand, does it matter who wins insofar as high-tech policy is concerned?
The answer is yes. It may have existed in a vacuum at one time, but high-tech policy will be forever intertwined in macro economic policy. The same is true for national security, education, transportation, trade, antitrust, health, environmental and labor policies.
Having said all that, how can one individual-the President of the United States (POTUS in official Washington vernacular)-be so smart as to divine what high-tech policy should be when none of us ever dreamed something called the Internet would come on the scene and so fundamentally change everything? Can POTUS be Proteus, the mythological malleable Greek sea god who knew all things past, present and future?
Proteus predicts Gore, by a byte.
