We already knew Vice President Al Gore was good at working White House phones and Buddhist
temples for noble causes, like the presidency. Now we’ve learned the veep is conspiring with other geeks to become the
first digital president of the New Millennium.
When he’s not having beer and pizza with advisers-“Gore-
techs”-around the country, writes the New Republic’s Dana Milbank, the veep’s strategizing with Silicon Valley
venture capitalist John Doerr to pull together a $1 million cyberspace campaign.
Gore, mind you, wants to see an
Internet-connected computer in every school, library and hospital by election-year 2000, leaving the Y2K problem to
someone else.
Comedian Al Franken, whose one-issue presidential campaign is based on ATM fee opposition,
predicts the Y2K bug will be the undoing of Gore and other candidates when consumers realize they cannot withdraw
cash from money machines this time next year. Franken predicts his own demise will begin two days into his
presidency when he succumbs to chronic fatigue.
Gore’s high-tech campaign is part of a powerful, fund-raising
machine that likely will purge all other Dem presidential hopefuls early next year in the new-fangled, front-loaded
primary structure.
Gore’s a cinch to raise $35 million by year’s end. By March or April 2000, it’ll be over.
In
addition to high tech, Gore-with particular help from telecom-media investment banker Steven Rattner of Lazard
Freres, which assisted in AT&T’s acquisition of McCaw Cellular-is courting Wall Street and about every other interest
group you can name.
Perhaps the Gore-techs campaign helps explain why the Internet commands a top spot in FCC
Chairman Bill Kennard’s 1999 agenda.
The wireless industry doesn’t have a problem with FCC Internet advocacy.
But why not do the same for wireless, which shares Internet industry characteristics of being a relatively young
business, wildly popular among consumers and highly revolutionary?
Oh, P.S. on the Clinton Arkansas love child
rumor: DNA results came back negative.
More concrete, according to House impeachment prosecutors, is the cell
phone call from Oval Office secretary Betty Currie to Monica Lewinsky to pick up gifts from the prez to Monica.
Imagine that: a cell phone call being key to an obstruction of justice charge that could remove a U.S. president
from office. But won’t.
