Debate: Bush’s IT approach contrasts with Kerry’s

WASHINGTON – U.S. President George Bush could continue his largely hands-off, market-driven approach to technology issues, while Democratic challenger John Kerry would take a more government-focused approach to issues such as encouraging broadband, cybersecurity and spam, said think tank pundits on both sides of the debate.

Technology experts Robert Atkinson and Thomas Lenard, responding to a questionnaire given to presidential candidates of the two major parties by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), agreed with each other that, on several technology issues, Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, would be more hands-on than Bush has been. CompTIA released the questionnaire, available at http://newsletters.comptia.org/Election2004/TechIssues.htm, last week.

A Kerry administration would take an “industrial policy” approach instead of letting the market deal with issues such as cybersecurity and broadband availability, said Lenard, a senior fellow and vice president for research at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, which advocates for free markets. Conservatives often decry so-called “industrial policy” as a shift away from free markets because it calls for spending government money to promote some industries and regulate others.

“The government shouldn’t do something if it can’t do something productive,” Lenard said in response to an Atkinson criticism that the Bush administration has done little to combat spam e-mail.

On the other hand, the Bush administration has largely left those issues up to private companies, said Atkinson, vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, which is aligned with moderate Democrats.

Asked about Bush’s answer on education and training programs, in which the president talks about his No Child Left Behind program and budget increases for job training and employment assistance, Atkinson said Bush has underfunded many training programs and shifted money away from some programs to pay for others.

“In many (technology policy) cases, the president’s rhetoric is right — I agree with it — but I question his record, his commitment and his competence,” Atkinson said. “What you really see in education is the president saying, ‘I don’t want to spend any money, I don’t want to exert leadership there.'”

Atkinson focused his criticism on Bush efforts on spreading broadband, strengthening cybersecurity and eliminating spam. Many Japanese customers have access to broadband up to 50 times faster than most U.S. customers can get, he noted. Kerry has proposed a 20 percent tax credit for companies offering broadband 20 times faster than what’s generally available today.

But Kerry’s plan is to pay for broadband tax credits with money the government eventually makes by auctioning off analog television spectrum as television stations move to digital signals, and that transition is moving slowly, Lenard said. “By the time the spectrum becomes available, everybody’s going to have broadband anyway,” Lenard said.

On spam, Atkinson criticized Bush for having a “defeatist attitude” of government not being able to help with the problem. Bush did nothing to encourage the passage of tougher proposals than the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, signed by Bush in late 2003.

Kerry’s response to CompTIA was short, however. While the Bush campaign answered CompTIA by talking about how CAN-SPAM sets some “rules of the road” for law enforcement, Kerry offered a one-sentence response to CompTIA’s spam question. “I am open to considering the best means available to ensure people do not receive unsolicited email,” Kerry’s campaign wrote.

Lenard countered with the argument that there’s little the federal government can do to combat spam. Private technology vendors offer products that have more of an effect than the government can, he said.

“I don’t think the Bush administration decided it didn’t want to regulate in the spam area for philosophical reasons,” Lenard added. “There was very little they could do, because there was a problem with authentication, the origin of these things.”

On cybersecurity, Atkinson called the Bush administration “lax” in leading any efforts, with three cybersecurity czars having left the administration since Bush took office.

“I want to come back to a point Tom made, which is a Kerry administration would be interventionist,” Atkinson said. “Yeah, he might be. On issue after issue, (the Bush administration) has an ideological predisposition to say, ‘No matter what the issue is, the private sector should deal with it.’ I’m sorry, but there are issues that require private-public partnerships. Kerry’s not going to have those blinders.”

But Lenard said it doesn’t make sense for the government to regulate cybersecurity because private vendors offer products to protect customers and companies. “The great bulk of the infrastructure is in private hands,” he said. “The private sector has ample incentive and ability to protect that infrastructure.”