Silicon Insider: Bush and Technology
B U R L I N G A M E, Calif., Jan. 9 -- Mr. President-elect, when it comes to high-tech, you are missing the point. Already.
One might imagine — given that the electronics industry is America’s largest manufacturing employer, the key dynamo of all the country’s economic expansions of the last decades and about the only positive force in itsinternational trade balance — that presidents may actually take thetime to learn something about the subject.
I doubt that presidents Reagan or Bush ever knew the difference between gate arraysand Gatorade. Bill Clinton, in his usual manner, made a few empty gesturesin the right direction (the White House Web site), but he never did seem to getit himself — indeed, a few well-chosen URLs might have saved him fromimpeachment.
Of Clinton’s two memorable gestures toward tech, NAFTA and Web-enabling the schools, the former was a GOP initiative and the latter showed he knew nothing about the digital economy.
Cluelessness Not, in Itself, a Bad Thing
Of the two candidates in the most recent, endless, election, Al Goreobviously understood tech far better than George W.
In fact, to my mind,the single most surprising image of the whole campaign (besides Al’s drunkendancing on loser night) was the cocktail napkin doodling Gore did oninformation technology for Red Herring magazine. Unfortunately, the doodle,like the campaign, showed that Gore got technology, but he didn’t get tech.His was the statist world of business book gurus, not the entrepreneurialreality of high tech’s mean streets.
In the end, he would have been adisaster for U.S. electronics, smothering it to death in a well-meaningregulatory embrace.
That brings us to our new president. On the campaign trail, and in thedebates, George W. proved, in regards to tech, to be … well, clueless.That, in itself, is not a bad thing. After all, many veteran SiliconValleyites would argue that the worst thing that ever happened to this townwas that we got noticed by Washington. Up until then — say, 1985 — we had apretty free run.
Related Stories
ABC News Live