If President Bush needs broad backing from technology thought-leaders to win re-election Nov. 2, he’ll have to change a lot of minds that today are convinced his administration has been bad for the IT industry. That’s the somewhat surprising conclusion drawn from listening to a diverse assemblage of entrepreneurs, analysts, venture capitalists, academics and IT executives at last week’s Vortex 2004, a Network World event that annually draws the industry’s elite.
SANTA BARBARA – If President Bush needs broad backing from technology thought-leaders to win re-election Nov. 2, he’ll have to change a lot of minds that today are convinced his administration has been bad for the IT industry.
That’s the somewhat surprising conclusion drawn from listening to a diverse assemblage of entrepreneurs, analysts, venture capitalists, academics and IT executives at last week’s Vortex 2004, a Network World event that annually draws the industry’s elite.
While corner-office Bush backers such as John Chambers and Michael Dell were not on hand, the president did have supporters to be sure – one called Kerry a socialist. But such voices were in a distinct minority and comparatively subdued. It’s also true that few in attendance were gushing about Kerry. Rather, the predominant sentiment over this two-day technology event – expressed in public forums and privately – was simply, anybody but Bush.
Among the president’s more passionate critics was Mitchell Kertzman, a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, former CEO of Liberate Technologies and founder of Powersoft.
“The tech industry thrives on innovation and challenge, but the innovators and the challengers are rarely the people with massive amounts of money to throw at political campaigns,” Kertzman told a fully engaged “town meeting” audience that brought a Mount St. Helens energy level to the soothingly posh Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, Calif. “You’ve got to get somebody [in the White House] who cares about something other than how much money these people can donate.”
Kertzman said he believes that focusing on the specifics of technology-related policy differences misses a more important consideration.
“What matters to the technology industry is macroeconomic policy because we’re all sensitive to macroeconomic policy . . . and that’s where I think Bush is a disaster,” Kertzman said. “He’s a disaster on the deficit, and I think the deficit is really dangerous, and he’s a disaster on global policy.”
Venture capitalist Geoffrey Moore, author of business books such as Crossing the Chasm and co-producer of the conference, told the audience he fears that the country’s lagging broadband position relative to Asia and the administration’s philosophical resistance to globalization will prove costly.
“Our telecommunications policy is ground zero for our competitiveness. We’re watching the competitiveness of this nation cross the Pacific,” Moore said. “So just as my father’s generation saw Europe pass the torch to America, we’re in the process of passing the torch to Asia, and damn it, we really ought to be a little bit more careful with the torch. We need to see a lot better leadership on these issues than what we’re getting.”
Jeffrey Blumenfeld, a partner with Crowell & Moring who specializes in anti-trust and intellectual property law, contends that the Bush administration squandered an opportunity to do better.
“Instead of abandoning any effort to make the 1996 Telecom Act work, he should have worked to make it work,” Blumenfeld said. “The FCC and the [Department of Justice] – who share responsibility for this – continually backed off when they needed to be more aggressive.”
But the president had supporters at the conference. John Oxaal, a general partner with Sevin Rosen Funds, waded in and braved the anti-Bush riptide.
“There is a libertarian or free-market wing of the Republican Party, and there’s a socialist wing of the Democratic Party,” Oxaal said. “I think Kerry fully embraces the socialist, government-control wing that has been discredited in the Soviet Union, East Germany vs. West Germany, North Korea vs. South Korea.”
“It’s looking backward to pursue these state-controlled policies that are favored by the Democrats, particularly the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, he said. “I think free markets win and President Bush has generally been on the free-market side of the equation.”
J. Roger Moody, a former executive at AT&T and CBS, now chairman and CEO of Sandpiper Synergies, said he believes the industry has been well served by the Bush team and would benefit from four more years of that direction.
“A lot of people rail against [FCC Chairman Michael] Powell, but at least he’s trying to keep things less regulated,” Moody said. On this score a Kerry administration “might be bad because he’s certainly the liberal type.”
Moody also praised the Bush administration’s opposition to regulating VoIP and fears Kerry “may want to tax everything.”
After listening to the anti-Bush barrage at the town meeting, Moody said he believes the president’s supporters were simply keeping their powder dry rather than engage the fervent critics.
Maybe so, but supporters had plenty of opportunity to engage over the two days.
“It’s no secret to anyone that the scientific community is very concerned,” said Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, when asked which candidate would better serve research work at her center.
“We’re worried about the U.S. falling behind and not being competitive. We’re worried about a paucity of funding for research and development. We’re worried about not being able to put together the infrastructures that are required for us moving ahead.” Berman said. “Whoever the next president is, scientists will be very happy to see scientific concerns become important again.”
Berman declined to name the candidate she believes would be more likely to make that happen.
Others needed no such prodding. Longtime IBM strategist John Landry, now chairman and CTO of Adesso Systems, said “I think Kerry is far more hip to technology’s impact on the economy than Bush seems to be. And a lot of that comes from Kerry having been a senator in Massachusetts for as long as he has.”
With Bush backers outnumbered and/or hesitant to engage, it fell to one of the town-meeting panelists who supports Kerry to add balance to what was often a one-sided debate.
“I don’t think they’re really all that different in terms of technology,” said David Kirkpatrick, a senior editor/columnist at Fortune magazine. “I don’t think Kerry has shown any particular sensitivity to technology. In fact, his arguments about outsourcing have been so idiotic that it’s really been a negative. It’s one of the things that I know people in the technology industry who support Kerry have choked over, and it’s led them to be not as public about their support as they might otherwise be.”
