Tech Policy Likely to Emerge as a Key Issue in Campaign
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.
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Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu. Recent Digital Nation columns are available at https://www.latimes.com/dnation.
