Al Gore's rhetorical use of high technology and the New Economy in crafting his political identity has been an almost unqualified success, impressing advisers and some tough political opponents.
"He's been able to kind of take the metaphor of Silicon Valley and extend it across the country," says Don Gips, Gore's chief domestic policy advisor. Even Dan Schnur, Republican political director of the Technology Network political action committee, admits Gore "is doing all the right things" in a public-relations sense.
But the issues that engage the sweepingly termed "technology community" are as diverse as the community itself. The administration's position on ecommerce, for example, may be completely irrelevant to winning the support of biotech execs. And to extend the effectiveness of Gore's New Economy pitch from the tech elite to the general public, the administration has pushed a wide array of related initiatives it hopes will have a broad appeal.
"Our high-level strategy was to balance the budget, open up foreign markets, invest in things like education, training, and R&D, and provide people with the tools they need to make most of these opportunities," says Tom Kalil of the National Economic Council, an advocate of Gore's New Economy approach and one of the White House's most serious tech thinkers.
John Podesta, President Clinton's deputy chief of staff, says that another effective tactic has been the White House's adoption of "an essentially deregulatory approach" that covers Gore's work on Food and Drug Administration reform, ecommerce and other "reinventing government" initiatives. The tactical package also includes avid backing for increased support for research and development and a recent proposal to help train new legions of infotech workers. Ventures like NetDay - in Kalil's words "an example of using the metaphor of distributed intelligence" - are also central to the effort.
"The unique contribution the vice president has made is that he's been thinking about these issues for a long time," says Kalil, "over 20 years before it was clear to most people in government and industry that, for example, the Internet was going to be a big deal."
Podesta says he hopes that all the work to date will translate into a simple message in Silicon Valley: "This administration gets it."
He acknowledges the job isn't done yet, though.
"I think what we need to do is keep [the message] fresh, broaden it," he says, "and really deal with the young entrepreneurs, the new kids on the block, who in a funny way are slightly distrustful of government, but easily engaged by the challenges of public policy and who can end up being lively partners with us."
The cynics' view
Outside the ranks of the true believers, it's easy to find critics who say Gore and company are promulgating a message that's soft and fuzzy.
Floyd Kvamme of Kleiner Perkins is milder than most when he notes that "with the perceived and factual success of entrepreneurialism in the Valley, everyone says they're in favor of entrepreneurs. And I'm still waiting to meet the first politician who's against education."
The real crunch will come, critics say, when feel-good platitudes fade in the glare of the bottom line. If any issue has catalyzed the distrust of Podesta's young entrepreneurs - and confirmed extreme anti-government bias of staid old computer companies � it's encryption.
After industry said firmly last year it supported House and Senate legislation that would essentially end export restrictions on software equipped with strong encryption, the administration went out of its way to derail the widely supported bills. As Congress goes back into session, the situation is a stalemate.
"There's a huge polarization on the Hill between what advocates of very liberal controls want and what law enforcement wants," says an industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity, "and it's not for lack of knowledge. They're just knocking heads."
Administration sources say the best chance for peace lies with talks among the interested parties - the industry, civil libertarians, and law enforcement and national security interests - with Gore as a kind of Jimmy Carter-style mediator.
A senior Senate aide involved with the issue says wearily: "I think that hope springs eternal. People in the industry really want someone in charge and they don't want it to be the FBI director. They want the vice president to step up to the plate and take charge, because they see the administration as optimistic, with a lot more flexibility than they may be able to get on the Hill with the FBI director around."
Gore, however, has not yet managed to convince software companies or Congress that he is really on top of the hard-line policy positions taken by the Defense Department, CIA, NSA, and FBI on one hand or the less restrictive approach applied by the Commerce Department.
"It may be that pressure from the VP helped push Commerce regulations to be as loose as they are at this point," says a congressional aide who has watched the debate. "But I don't think [Gore] has taken leadership."
A year of decision
Beth Inadomi, a principal at the high-tech lobbying firm Podesta Associates, has been immersed in the encryption debates for several years. She is a former counsel for both House and Senate committees on science and technology and now represents a number of the largest computer companies. Inadomi says she believes that Gore, whom she describes as "head and shoulders above other political leaders on these issues," will have a significant impact on the encryption debate.
"At the end of '98," notes Inadomi, "the [Commerce Department] regs are scheduled to expire, and the White House is going to be a major player. Ultimately, the president and vice president are going to have to make this call. And it's going to be a political decision, not a technical one."
Inside the White House, John Podesta, who has been given the brief on encryption, agrees.
"I think that the hope for a technical solution that would be a short-term fix for the fears of law enforcement was unrealistic," he says. "We [the administration] stumbled into a quick fix mentality too quickly, and the industry was overly paranoid too abruptly. The vice president has maintained open lines of communication all along, and is one of the people who understands the issue from both perspectives."
Podesta sounds equally confident when he asserts that encryption battles "haven't poisoned the overall atmosphere" between the administration and the high-tech community. Nor do they seem to trouble his personal relationships. (Podesta's brother Tony heads Podesta Associates, where principal Inadomi, who is married to John Podesta's former White House colleague Tim Newell, works on encryption.) In Washington, where the public-private revolving door is a fact of life, legal firewalls and ordinary tact help keep families and friends together. "We just agree not to talk about that stuff," says Podesta.
All the players are counting on the continued political savvy of Gore, who more than ever is positioning himself as the man who can build a 21st-century bridge between government and the high-tech CEOs he admires.
The outcome, of course, remainns to be seen.
As Gore put it three years ago, launching his proposal for telecommunications deregulation: "A time comes in any revolution when expectations are high but accomplishments are not yet concrete."
