There they were-Bill Clinton in Davos and Al Gore in the Granite State-basking in the glory of a record U.S. economic expansion fueled by a raging high-tech sector of mobile phones and dot-coms.
While it deserves some credit, the administration either is unwilling or incapable of getting beyond the euphoria of the moment. Policy wonks that they are, Clinton and Gore are attracted to, among other things, ideas. They tend to get lost in them; the idea is the ideal. For them, thinking never seems to advance beyond the `high’ of intellectual discovery. Some might call it mental laziness. Others would say it’s quintessential Clinton-Gore superficiality.
Beneath the surface of the digital revolution that’s sweeping the globe are harsh political realities and contradictions that require deeper thought by government leaders. Anything less will invite bad policy and broken dreams.
So it was in Davos, where Clinton spoke of his fascination with an Internet cafe he visited in China. “The more people know, the more opinions they’re going to have … They will not be denied access.”
Oh, really? Communist China is cracking down on the free flow of information over the Internet, monitoring each and every Web site in the country for subversives. Send an e-mail or transmit a document not cleared with state censors, and you could end up, well, where many Chinese free spirits find themselves today: in jail. That’s if you’re lucky. China is quite fond of labor camps for rehabilitation. And, oh, did you know China executes citizens at a rate that makes Texas look compassionate.
So it was last week on Capitol Hill where three senators, a leading privacy advocate and a think-tank fellow blasted the administration’s cyber defense plan as being late in coming and lacking in structure and substance.
Did you know China, our chummy new trading partner, is making cyber warfare a mainstay to help make up for military weakness elsewhere? The White House knows that and a lot more, but would rather not bring such matters up with Chinese leaders. It might offend President Jiang Zemin and jeopardize U.S. commercial interests in the world’s largest emerging market. Clinton’s trade policy doubles as foreign policy.
So it was two weeks ago when two industry groups and several GOP presidential contenders dismissed the `Digital Divide’ as an issue created-and exploited-by the White House to score points with minority, low-income and rural voters this fall.
And so it has gone for so many digital issues-encryption, digital wiretap, high-tech litigation reform, auctions and telecom act implementation-during the Clinton-Gore years. Lots of polished policy talk, with polluted policy to show for it at times.
In all fairness, we mustn’t blame Clinton-Gore for the fact that local residential telecom competition still doesn’t exist. Republicans ignored the White House in fashioning the ’96 act.
