See Update after the story
It's been great sport the last couple of weeks to make fun of the fact that John McCain is so out of touch with the technology that drives much of our economy, democracy and just about everything else. McCain earlier this year described himself as a "computer illiterate" in a video that surfaced in June, and he's been trying to dig himself out of that hole since then, even as commentators Anna Quindlen, David Corn, and countless others have slammed him for being oblivious.
His aides peg him as "aware of the Internet," even if he relies on his wife, Cindy, and others for his electronic services. While McCain now says he's learning more each day, two years ago, McCain described himself as a "Neanderthal'' -- I don't even type." As the furor grew over the last month or so, he now says he's learning more about the Internets every day. Perhaps McCain is taking his cue from the fate of Al Gore. Gore, as a member of Congress and Senator, was a leader on technology policy and did help shepherd the Internet from an academic curiosity to today's ubiquity. His thanks was to be derided by the right-wing noise machine through the 2000 election as having said he "invented" the Internet, which he didn't say, and didn't do. McCain must aware of the techno-phobia of his party, and so stays away from becoming too knowledgeable. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It's not as if we expect he and Paris to have a BlackBerry-to-Sidekick texting session, although it might help to clear the air after those ads. (Hers was better.)
But as bad as it is that McCain isn't familiar with, and doesn't use, a computer for even little things, that's just a symptom of something far more serious. Use of a computer and the Internet is one thing. A whole different level of awareness are the elements and philosophy that go into making an economic and technological policy that govern how everybody else uses computers and the Internet. Unfortunately, his broad policy history isn't simply one of being oblivious. It would be actively harmful to our economy and our standing in the world because it would chill competition and innovation at least as much, if not more, than the misguided policies we have now.
Let's briefly compare. Barack Obama released a comprehensive tech policy on November 14, 2007, while visiting Google. He framed the policy as a forward-looking set of ideas to move the economy, starting with protecting an "Open Internet" and the recognition of the value an open Internet has had.
McCain has yet to release anything on the topic. It has been reported that Michael Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is drafting one for McCain. Powell was hand-picked for the FCC by McCain (shoving aside a sitting commissioner, Rachelle Chong), and is frequently a surrogate for McCain on tech policy debates. Reportedly, Powell will leave technical issues, such as whether the Internet should be open and free from discrimination by telephone and cable companies, out of his discussion. Those issues are "in the weeds," he said .
That contrast is striking, but even more so as the United States continues to decline in Internet usage among developed, and sometimes, developing, countries. The number-crunchers can delve into the esoterica whether we are 12th in the world, or 13th, or 15th, depending on what and how you count. But the trend is unmistakable -- we're headed down. Unfortunately for McCain, his policy history is one that will continue to lead us down, rather than up. It's a history of siding largely with the big telephone and cable companies, of opposing an Open Internet. The more control over Internet access the big telecom companies assumed, the lower our rankings. In contrast, the countries with the higher rankings have more competition and less control by the big companies. We once had a good policy, but little by little it was taken out by Powell and the FCC. With it went the competition McCain wants, so now most people have at most two choices for real Internet service, rather than the dozens we had 10 years ago.
Congress in early 1996 passed a massive overhaul of telecommunications law. For the most part, it gave big industry what it wanted - telephone companies, cable companies and broadcasters all got some goodies out of it. Long-distance companies and competitors to telephone companies, not so much. By any accounts ,except those of the Bell companies created after the breakup of AT&T in the early 1980s, the Bell companies made out just fine. There were seven of them then - there are three now. Through the debate over the legislation, McCain pursued what might be called an inconsistent philosophy at best. He wanted deregulation and competition - two things that would be mutually exclusive in the telecom environment of the times.
He and Sen. Bob Packwood (R-OR) opposed the Telecom Act because it wasn't sufficiently deregulatory. Their solution was simply to set a date, a timeline, and declare that after said date, every company could compete with any other company in every line of business. Back then, unlike now, local telephone companies like Verizon and (today's) AT&T couldn't offer long-distance service, but wanted to. This bill would let them combine the two services in a way that wouldn't allow long-distance companies to compete for long.
The problem with that approach is that on any given deadline, the Bell companies were, and are, the biggest, baddest, companies on the block. The deregulation deadline would only have resulted in the immediate wipe-out of the long-distance and competitive industry. That might have been more humane than the long, slow death they eventually suffered, but at least there was competition for a little while before the Bells wiped out most of it, aided by the FCC. Ironically, McCain later complained about the Telecom Act, which freed the Bell companies from the regulatory barriers of buying each other, by saying when then SBC (now AT&T) bought Ameritech (no longer with us), that the bill "stymies competition" and depriving consumers of choices.
McCain also opposed the part of the Telecom Act that extended discounts on Internet access to schools, libraries and rural health-care clinics. While the program, nicknamed "e-rate" has had its problems over the years, there's also no doubt it helped bring many educational institutions into the Internet age more quickly than they would have otherwise. In 1998, McCain tried to use access to e-rate discounts as a club, introducing legislation that would have cut off e-rate money to recipients which didn't have filtering software on their computers. Librarians were among the groups which objected, and during a Feb. 10, 1998 hearing, McCain was particularly rude to Elizabeth Whitaker, the Tucson coordinator of instructional technologies, who opposed the bill. The bill didn't pass, despite repeated attempts.
Over the years, McCain has consistently resisted attempts to have the big telecom carriers - telephone and cable -- open up their networks to provide competition. While McCain has railed through the years about cable rates and cable programming packages, he rejected attempts in 1999 to force cable companies - then the only providers of high-speed Internet -- to allow access to outside providers. That move would have brought new competition to the Internet market. That same year he sponsored a bill (S. 1043) that would have freed telephone companies from any obligation to offer wholesale access to their networks for others to offer Internet service. That was the period of time, recall, when there were thousands of local Internet Service Providers who existed precisely because they could buy the access McCain would have denied them.
In 2005, McCain introduced with Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) an updated version (S. 1504), which would similarly have, in the name of competition, eliminated requirements that the Bell companies resell their phone services.
Finally, in 2006, McCain voted against the concept of an open free Internet when the Senate Commerce Committee marked up telecommunications legislation over three days in 2006. On June 28, McCain voted against an amendment that would have guaranteed Net Neutrality. It failed on an 11-11 tie vote. That day is more well known as the day Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) delivered his famous "series of tubes" diatribe in response to a speech in favor of Net Neutrality by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).
McCain's telecom contradictions continue to this day. That's his story and McCain is sticking to it. In answers to a questionnaire from CNET news earlier this year, McCain said he still wants to "promote competition and reduce regulation" and seeks "market-based" solutions to do so. In a speech in Kentucky in April this year, he proposed a version of a plan that had been put forward by local telephone companies and rejected by the legislature. The original plan was to use a tax write-off for little companies, like AT&T, as an incentive to put in high-speed Internet service. McCain's plan was the same tune with different words. He wanted to help AT&T pay for the cost of installing broadband service through loans or bonds.
That's McCain's view, contradictions and all. Talk about deregulation and free markets, do nothing to enable competition, help the big guys. We've seen what direction that type of thinking has taken us. Perhaps if McCain were more Internet-literate he would have seen that.
Update:
Not long after this story went up, Dow Jones ran a story that McCain's innovation plan would be released next week.
The McCain surrogates were careful to say it would be "about an innovation agenda, much more than about a narrow telecom regulatory proposal." Well, pardon me if that telecom stuff gets narrow and arcane, more so than warmed-over nostrums of "innovation" agendas. It happens that narrow, arcane stuff helps run the Internet and power the economy.
Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who is putting together McCain's plan, made the point exactly as predicted. The story quoted Powell: "'Google (GOOG) was born in an unregulated watch. Yahoo (YHOO). IPod,' said Powell. 'Where was the missing government piece that would have made those creations better?'"
The fact is that Google was created in a regulated environment, as was Yahoo!. Each was born at a time when the Internet was governed by a regulatory structure ("common carrier") that by law forbade telephone companies from interfering with what went over the Internet.
The Google founders, in fact, have been stout defenders of the issue we call Net Neutrality to reinstate that non-discrimination element back into law so that the Internet can continue as the open, free and non-discriminatory marvel that it has been. They have said repeatedly that Google wouldn't exist if the telephone companies had been able to exert the kind of pressure those companies now say they want to.
That's the "government piece" that made Google and Yahoo! able to exist, and that Powell, during his chairmanship, washed away. The iPod exists as it does because of another long-standing government regulation, which allows equipment like laptops to be connected to the telephone network.
Today, only constant pressure from groups like Public Knowledge (my day-job employer), our friends at Free Press and many others are keeping the telephone and cable companies honest.
It's a shame that those advising McCain don't realize that it is because of government, not in spite of it, that progress is possible. What the realize instead is the destructive power of government to channel benefits and power to large companies, rather than the creative power of government to allow new ideas, like Google, Yahoo! and the iPod to exist.