Tag Archives: politics

Assessing the Candidates on Technology

Posted on by
Reply

From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

Tomorrow, Americans will choose between two presidential candidates who have very different ideologies. Although John McCain and Barack Obama both agree in principle on the need to improve the U.S.’s technology competitiveness, they disagree on some issues that are important to technology professionals. Here is an overview of their similarities and differences on some critical technology policy issues.

Technology education

Both candidates agree on the need to hire and train more teachers with technology skills as well as to improve the competitiveness of American students in science and technology.

McCain proposes to fully fund the Bush administration’s America Competes Act, which provides a variety of educational investments.

Obama supports doubling federal funding for basic research over ten years and promoting the National STEM Scholarship Database Act, which would create a database to coordinate information on financial aid opportunities available in science and technology

Tax policy

Here, McCain is more specific than Obama.  His initiatives include:

  • Make the R&D tax credit permanent
  • Keep capital gains taxes low
  • Allow first-year expensing of new equipment
  • Oppose Internet taxation
  • Oppose higher taxes on wireless service
  • Lower the corporate tax rate to 25%

Obama also supports making the R&D tax credit permanent, but his tax plan is more oriented around individuals and families. He does support tax credits for small businesses and corporations that invest in jobs in the United States.

Government’s role

both candidates believe government should be a standard-bearer for effective use of information technology and each is quite specific in how they will get there.

McCain promises to create a nationwide public safety network by the end of his first term that would support first responders in emergencies. He wants to set up more Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), in which industry and government enter into public/private projects. He believes more government services should be available online and that the government should use videoconferencing and collaborative networks more effectively. Finally, he proposes to “ensure that Administration appointees across the government have adequate experience and understanding of science, technology and innovation.”

Obama focuses on accountability, which he says has been lacking in the Bush administration. He pledges to use “cutting-edge technologies” to create a new level of transparency and accountability for government and to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to coordinate infrastructure, policies and services across federal agencies. He also pledges to reinvigorate antitrust prosecution.

Obama also proposes specifically to invest $10 billion per year over the next five years to create standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. He also seeks to invest $150 billion over the next ten years to enable American engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs to advance alternative energy.

Internet

The Obama campaign has probably made better use of the Internet as a campaign tool than any previous candidate.  Not surprisingly, Obama supports broad expansion of Internet access to every American. However, McCain’s objectives are similar in many ways.

McCain proposes to “encourage private investment to facilitate the build-out of infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet connectivity all over America…and allow local governments to offer such services, particularly when private industry fails to do so.” He also wants to establish a “People Connect Program” that rewards companies that offer high-speed Internet access services to low-income customers. He opposes “net neutrality” in favor of “an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices.”

Obama proposes to provide “true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives.” He also wants to give parents more control over information their children see on-line while vigorously enforcing laws against people who try to exploit children. He supports net neutrality.

Global trade

Both candidates want to see America become more competitive in overseas technology markets. Both support cracking down on intellectual property theft abroad.

McCain sees to expand the number of H-1B visas to enable US companies to employ more foreign workers.

Lessons From the Campaign Trail

Posted on by
Reply

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.

Businessweek’s Catherine Holahan writes this week about the big lead Barack Obama has built against John McCain in online visibility. While I’m not going to declare a preference for either candidate, I do think it’s worth noting the lessons marketers can learn from the Obama campaign’s success.

Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.

The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn’t with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it’s rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.

The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates — or marketers — use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.

The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.

The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.

What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.

Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you’re quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.

Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.