This is a strange town, one where being berated in public can be preferable than being ignored.
Government officials?those elected and appointed–want to be relevant. The truth is, you’re nobody `til somebody levels you.
John Kneuer, anxiously awaiting Senate action on his nomination to head the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, knows. There he sat at the witness table next to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, all but ignored until the final moments of the Senate confirmation hearing last Tuesday.
That Kneuer is in line to be President Bush’s key telecom advisor in a world where transmission of 1s and 0s is increasingly migrating to the airwaves appeared to matter little to Senate Commerce Committee members. No questions on U.S. spectrum management, or even how this country can better prepare for World Radiocommunication Conferences. That is for policy wonks; it does not register with constituents, campaign donors and others the way media ownership, USF and net neutrality do. Nothing either on implementation of the Bush spectrum policy initiative. Perhaps Kneuer will receive some written questions on esoteric spectrum issues that don’t play well on camera.
Likewise, on the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 it seemed of minor consequence to most committee members that Kneuer’s agency has been tasked to administer a $1 billion program to provide grants to public safety agencies for interoperable communications. NTIA also has been directed to manage a $1.5 billion program to educate and financially aid consumers in obtaining gear for converting analog TV signals to digital. It’s all part of the package to finally force broadcasters to surrender prime spectrum real estate at 700 MHz. Want to see rioting in the streets, Capitol Hill switchboards light up and cell phone networks go down? Get the analog-to-digital TV transition wrong and homeland insecurity will blossom overnight.
During the hearing, it became obvious that Kneuer, serving as acting NTIA chief since Michael Gallagher’s departure earlier this year, was the odd man out. “Mr. Kneuer, we know you’re here,” Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) apologetically offered at one point. Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said he was sorry for mispronouncing the nominee’s last name and promised to submit a written question on DTV converter boxes. Later, when the hearing was nearing the end of its natural life, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sympathetically said. “I feel like Mr. Kneuer has been left out.”
To make it up to him, Boxer knocked Kneuer over his failure to state the date on which NTIA would begin making interoperability grants to public safety agencies. If that didn’t make him feel important enough, the no-nonsense California lawmaker asked Kneuer to write her with a projected date. Suddenly, Kneuer, not Martin, commanded center stage. He could revel in ravaged relevancy. Kneuer had arrived.
