IP: Chapman, LA Times on Tech Policy...

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> DIGITAL NATION
>
> Tech Policy Likely to Emerge as a Key Issue in Campaign
>
> By Gary Chapman
>
> Copyright 2000, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved
>
> During the Democratic Party convention here, we're not likely to hear much 
> detail about the candidates' plans for science and technology policy. That 
> would make even the most dedicated convention watchers reach for their TV 
> remotes. But future science and technology policy will be an important 
> centerpiece of many campaign issues, especially given Vice President Al 
> Gore's history of running as a candidate of and for high tech.
>
> When Gore and Clinton ran in 1992, they attracted the support of many 
> high-tech leaders of that time who had previously been lifelong 
> Republicans, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. President John Young and the 
> then-head of Apple Computer Inc., John Sculley. Gore, in particular, who 
> had been promoting the Internet for years as a senator with influence on 
> science and technology policy, cast himself as a young and tech-savvy 
> candidate in sharp contrast to President Bush. Bush came to represent an 
> older generation who didn't yet grasp the importance of technology.
>
> Of course, the 1992 election was before the "dot-com" delirium, the 
> technology-spiked stock market boom, the sweep of the Internet around the 
> world and the recognition that high tech is the driving force of the economy.
>
> Now, in this year's election, no one underestimates the significance of 
> technology. Gore has once again positioned himself as the candidate who 
> best understands high tech, and he has the support of some major 
> technology players such as Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr 
> and Apple Computer's Steve Jobs.
>
> Moreover, the two presidential campaigns are shaping up as a referendum on 
> how best to manage a technology-driven economy because the technology 
> advisors surrounding George W. Bush are opposed to just about everything 
> Gore believes in.
>
> When Clinton and Gore came into office in January 1993, the first policy 
> paper they produced was about their high-tech plans. Titled "Technology 
> for America's Growth," the paper released just three weeks after their 
> inauguration was a statement about a new direction for federal technology 
> policy, one that emphasized targeted civilian technology investments 
> instead of the old model of spending money on military research and 
> development with the hope that something useful for the economy would then 
> "spin off" from military research.
>
> The Clinton administration also proposed a dramatic initiative of spending 
> about $60 billion on various civilian programs, including technology 
> research, during a time of crushing federal budget deficits. Their 
> philosophy was that federal spending could jump-start the 
> recession-plagued economy and that technology R&D would lead to prosperity 
> and job creation.
>
> Congress, however, balked because of the financial risk of this proposal, 
> and only a few of the Clinton-Gore plans were funded. Then came the 
> election of 1994, when the Republicans took over the House of 
> Representatives and set the stage for six years of bitter conflict between 
> Congress and the Clinton White House, which included, of course, a 
> shutdown of the government and the second impeachment of a president.
>
> The Republican who took over the chairmanship of the House Science 
> Committee in 1994 was Robert S. Walker from Pennsylvania, handpicked for 
> the job by his mentor, Newt Gingrich. Walker set about dismantling all the 
> Clinton-Gore plans for science and technology. He cut the federal R&D 
> budget 34% over five years, he tried to eliminate the Commerce Department, 
> he regarded with contempt all the civilian investment programs Gore 
> favored, and he slashed funding for programs such as renewable energy 
> research and boosted funding for nuclear power. His committee held 
> hearings on whether global climate change is real or not, hearings stacked 
> with witnesses skeptical about global warming.
>
> The late Rep. George E. Brown Jr., Walker's Democratic predecessor as 
> chairman of the House Science Committee, called Walker "the most 
> ideological chairman in the entire Congress."
>
> Walker is now chief technology advisor to Gov. George W. Bush. Walker 
> retired from Congress in 1997 and has been a lobbyist in Washington since 
> then. His reappearance as an advisor to Bush portends a repeat of the 
> battles of 1994, a time that heated up the politics of science and 
> technology policy to a roiling boil.
>
> Gore essentially believes the federal government's role is to support 
> research and development in so-called critical technologies related to 
> energy, transportation, the environment and the Internet, among other 
> fields. He has been the political figure behind federal programs such as 
> the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles program run by the 
> Commerce Department, the Advanced Battery Consortium and Internet 2, the 
> research program investigating a very high-speed successor to today's 
> Internet technology.
>
> Walker, however, believes that the government should invest only in basic 
> scientific research and leave technological development to the private 
> sector. Bush's platform on technology calls only for larger investments in 
> military R&D, a $20-billion-per-year increase.
>
> Gore's model is sometimes called "technology pull," meaning that the goal 
> of accomplishing something grand, in scientific or technological terms, 
> pulls the technology toward the goal. Examples include the Apollo space 
> program in the 1960s and the goal of halting global warming.
>
> Walker's approach is more like the Cold War decades of military R&D 
> spinoffs, combined with a faith in the "black box" model of science, which 
> means that the government simply dumps money into the mysterious black box 
> of science and out comes something good for society.
>
> If Gore is elected president and if the House reverts to a Democratic 
> majority, Gore is likely to revive many of his technology investment plans 
> that were nixed by Republicans six years ago. He may even restart the 
> Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the nation's only 
> technology forecasting agency that was killed by budget cuts in 1995.
>
> If Gore takes the White House and Congress remains in Republican hands, we 
> can expect to see a continuation of the ideological conflicts over science 
> and technology policy that exploded on the political stage in 1994-95. 
> We'll then continue to muddle along in Washington, without much progress, 
> until the "new economy" hits its first recession and the rules of the game 
> change once again
>
> Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of 
> Texas at Austin. He can be reached at >Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman () mail utexas edu.
>
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