PERSPECTIVE ON TECHNOLOGY : Oops, Wrong Century : Fields’ demotion sets back fledgling U.S. efforts to bolster technological research and development.

At a time when America is struggling to prepare for a 21st-Century economic reality, the White House economic gurus are mired in 19th-Century economic theory. They don’t believe that government should get involved in picking “winners and losers” in the development of new products in the private sector. Craig Fields’ forced transfer to a Defense Department agency studying military laboratories creates a topsy-turvy corollary to the Peter Principle: Competent employees will be fired at the moment when their talents are most in need.

What the Bush Administration seems to forget is that the government is already intimately involved in the American economy. Two of our most successful export industries--aerospace and agriculture--have been nurtured by government. And we are in an age when the newest, most important discoveries go into production only after years of research and development involving scores of experts and millions of dollars. The private sector can do it, but much more will be done--and a lot quicker, too--if government pitches in.

That’s a lesson our economic competitors know well. They’re creating new models for government involvement in business that implement a kind of economic nationalism, a new mercantilism. Germany and Japan are not afraid to put tax dollars behind private-sector research and development projects with high growth potential. Little wonder that Japan now leads the United States in all but one of the 40 key technology sectors, according to a recent study by MITI, the Japanese government agency that invests in that nation’s private sector.

With the collapse of communism, the challenge of the future lies in our ability to succeed in the increasingly competitive and technologically sophisticated global marketplace. For President Bush to fire Fields at this critical juncture is like President Franklin D. Roosevelt firing Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of World War II.

What’s at stake is more than one civil servant’s career: It is the economic security of our nation. We need more people like Craig Fields in government--people with the ability to see the potential of new technologies and direct the resources of government to help ensure their development.