Dissecting the Clinton Papers on Technology

After looking over the Clinton campaign’s numerous position faxes on technology policy, it’s easy to see why so many prominent Silicon Valley Republican CEOs--notably Apple Computer’s John Sculley and Hewlett-Packard’s John Young--have decided to endorse the Democratic ticket.

They could have written it all themselves.

There’s support for Sematech, the industry-government consortium designed to boost competitiveness in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing technologies; a “manufacturing extension” program patterned after the successful Agricultural Extension Service; tax credits targeted for new equipment investment; a civilian version of the Pentagon’s extraordinarily cost-effective Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that specializes in new technology development. These proposals and themes are ones that the high-tech intelligentsia have been harping on for years as essential to America’s industrial competitiveness.

“It may not be a consensus,” says Tom Schneider, the Clinton campaign’s point man on science and technology policy, “but (our proposals) reflect some of the best thinking on these issues around.”

Indeed, many of these positions read as if they had been drafted by the Council on Competitiveness (not to be confused with Vice President Dan Quayle’s council with the same name)--a bipartisan group of industrial leaders, educators and former government officials who say the federal government approach to technology policy has been lackadaisical.

Who founded this council? Why, it was Hewlett-Packard’s own John Young, who launched it after the Reagan Administration blithely brushed aside virtually all the recommendations of the Young-led Presidential Commission on Industrial Productivity.

What goes around, comes around. Rock-ribbed Republican laissez-faire economics is no longer Silicon Valley’s ideology of choice.

“We’ve had close consultations with the Council on Competitiveness for a long time,” acknowledges Schneider, who runs a corporate restructuring company in Washington. “We admire their thinking.”

Indeed, Schneider stresses that the “new paradigm” of the Clinton proposals is not “industrial policy”--a phrase that conjures up images of the failed national economic plans of the old Soviet Union--but a “new partnership” between the federal government and America’s innovation enterprises.

“The best thing you can say about the Bush approach is that he’s let the marketplace work,” Schneider asserts. “Unfortunately, leaving it to the market alone without the help of government is a mistake. That is a lesson the Japanese and the Germans have taught us clearly. . . . There needs to be a different relationship between government and enterprises--a ‘new covenant.’ It’s a post-ideological way of how one looks at the problem.”

Instead of being primarily an industrial referee, says Schneider, a Clinton administration would want government to be more of a participant. The federal government shouldn’t so much focus on new product development, per se, but rather on subsidizing investment in human capital and America’s research and development infrastructure.

There has even been a dab of thought given to the organizational structure of this “new partnership.” In a Clinton administration, the vice president would become the de facto “technology czar”--supervising the capital competitiveness apparat. That role would of course go to Al Gore, whose Capitol sobriquet “Senator Science” was as much an insult as a compliment, depending on which side of the aisle you sat.

However, Schneider declines to be any more specific about what kinds of new institutions or Cabinet restructuring his candidate’s proposals might require. “The whole ball of wax is up in the air,” he insists. “It’s all up in the air. . . . We are thinking about new institutions and new agencies. . . . What it reflects is that we’re going to have to determine the best way to reorganize the government. . . . We just haven’t decided yet.”

Unfortunately, that makes many of the Clinton proposals read like a poorly phrased prenuptial agreement--full of good intentions and useful specifics, but missing the critical details of how the resources will actually be allocated.

To be fair, only the most rabidly partisan critic would dismiss the Clinton technology policy papers as inconsequential fluff. In fact--given their origins--they appear both thoughtful and reasonable. They do not read like a brief prepared by central planning zealots.

However, what’s both worrisome and disappointing is what these position papers don’t address. When one talks of a “new partnership,” it’s not illogical to ask what the rights and responsibilities of the partners will be.

What is a Clinton administration not prepared to do for U.S. industry? What rights--intellectual property or otherwise--must industry be willing to give up if the government becomes a partner? In a public/private technology consortium, where taxpayers bear the explicit risk, who really gets to call the shots? How will economic competitiveness goals be balanced with social equity goals when the government is a full partner in funding industrial initiatives?

Ironically, the Clinton campaign is more specific on its proposed programs than the philosophies that underlie them. But even the best-intentioned pragmatism needs to be moored to clearly articulated principles.

It’s a pity that the Clinton proposals do not do this simply and directly. The loss is inevitably ours.

(Michael Schrage plans to examine President Bush’s technology policy in an upcoming column. )