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Convention Cool To Tech Agenda
by Drew Clark
In the 2000 presidential campaign, the information technology sector was clearly "special." It merited extra attention from each major political party, which went out of their way to court IT.
This campaign cycle, technology is greeted more like a "special interest."
As the Democratic National Convention opened Monday, what is most salient is the subdued nature of the information technology agenda. Few events, onstage at the Fleet Center or offstage around the city, feature the role of technology. The Democratic Party platform released last week has a single paragraph devoted squarely to the role of information technology. And all the Internet buzz featured in the each of the 2000 political conventions seems this year to have transferred not to the companies that make it work, but to individual "bloggers" who use it.
"The feeling is that the broader economic theme is a more important one in the campaign" than information technology per se, said Rob Atkinson, vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) think tank affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council. He said it is attributable to the collapse of the technology "bubble" late in 2000, and partly contributes to the perception that technology itself is driving the "offshore outsourcing" movement of exporting jobs overseas.
Tech's Behind-the-Scenes Role
The lower-profile role in front of the camera does not mean that technology is completely fading into the woodwork. Most are the key technology companies and associations that have some presence in Boston. A quick glance at the list of "official sponsors" shows a visible supporting role. Among the companies listed as supporting the convention are technology or communications giants Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Nextel. Other "official providers" are Internet streaming company Akamai, blogging technology provider Kintera, video conferencer Polycom, and the Map Network. Only three of 13 such sponsors are outside of the IT or communications field: United, US Airways and General Motors - and GM's key message is about its innovative hydrogen hybrid cars.
But those behind-the-scenes efforts are a marked contrast to the more limited dialogue in the campaign and on the convention trail about the public policies affecting and driving information technology. Atkinson views that as a mistake and said the party should embrace the fact that "certain parts of the economy serve as engines of growth, other parts are more followers."
He said Bush's policies have favored non-growth industries like energy at the expense of the tech sector. But even the key policy event that PPI is hosting on Wednesday - which includes rising political stars like Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Delaware Sen. Tom Carper and Reps. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Bob Menendez of New Jersey - neither focus on nor feature the tech industry. Instead, they and economic advisers to Kerry and former President Clinton will talk more generally on "the creation of new and better jobs for the economy of the future."
"Tech doesn't mean for the economy in the public mind in 2004 what it did 2000," agreed Bruce Mehlman, a former Bush administration technology official who now oversees the Computer Systems Policy Project for leading technology CEOs. "The exuberance is less irrational, the market caps are much closer to earth and the realities of their global role have become more nuanced."
Economic Issues Bump IT Off the Stage
Another factor contributing to the lull of technology-related issues in the broader campaign may be the fizzled candidacy of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who tapped into the Internet as an organizing medium.
Thus far, only two technology-related issues have blipped above the radar in the political campaign. Offshoring raised its head in the Democratic presidential primaries, when candidate (and presumptive nominee John Kerry) blasted "Benedict Arnold CEOs for shipping American jobs overseas."
More recently, there was a boomlet of interest in broadband, as President Bush promoted his goal to offer universal high-speed Internet access - on the same day that Kerry announced a high-tech agenda with a variety of action points to boost connectivity.
Kerry campaign officials insist that they are not ignoring high-tech, but merely that looming issues - like controversies surrounding the war in Iraq - have greater impact upon their domestic agenda. Former Clinton economic policy adviser Gene Sperling said Saturday, "One of the reasons this convention speech is such a great opportunity is that there is no question that drumbeat on Iraq and prisoner abuse has drowned out the specific policy proposals" Kerry has offered related to information technology.
Sperling, who is an economic adviser to the Kerry campaign, added that Bush has neglected the manufacturing sector, which had lost 2.7 million lost jobs in the current administration, by attempting to cut programs like the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. He also faulted the administration on trade, saying it "never put any or significant pressure on China to stop manipulating its currency, until Democrats made it an issue in the fall of 2003." Commerce Department and economic policy officials in the Bush administration have said tax cuts, innovation and negotiating free-trade deals have helped pull the economy out of the recession.
Sperling also slammed technology-specific policies of the Bush administration. "Even on the high-tech front, our support among the business leaders, normally in the Republican camp, is quite striking because of the neglect of things like the National Science Foundation and the politicization of science and technology," he said. "There is an enormous amount of cynicism about the fact that the administration only started talking about broadband, when Sen. Kerry started to talk about a proposal."
Tech Scores Pluses and Minuses
Technology leaders are pleased that both camps are focusing on the importance of broadband. And another top priority - making the research and development tax credit permanent - lies in the paragraph devoted to technology in the 41-page party platform. That paragraph reads:
"We will invest in the technologies of the future, from renewable energy to nanotechnology to biomedicine, and will work to make permanent the research and development tax credit. We will achieve universal access to broadband services, which could add $500 billion to our economy, generate 1.2 million jobs, and transform the way we learn and work. And we will put science ahead of ideology in research and policymaking."
Jim Prendergast, executive director of the American for Technology Leadership and among the industry officials at the convention, said, "Having an R&D tax credit provision in the platform sends a very positive signal" to the technology industry. He added that in the post-bubble word, tech "is not the rock star anymore, but it is still very, very important."
But even such victories on broadband and R&D highlights the silence of both major presidential campaigns on what TechNet CEO Rick White calls the "number one, number two and number three priorities" of the industry: barring the mandatory inclusion of stock options from companies' balance sheets.
"For us, the real focus for us right now is stock options," White said in an interview last month. The Democratic platform avoids that issue, except to say, "We need to require honest information and full disclosure" of employee stock plans, and bar retirement plans with company stock. Bush supported the industry's position on expensing stock options in 2002, and some see a potential advantage on the issue for Bush were he to amplify on the issue and make it a part of a campaign geared to an "ownership society."
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