Get used to the sight of politicians courting techno-geeks. In software-speak, Gore and Forbes are ““early adopters’’ of the trend. To industry insiders, Microsoft’s summit was a sales pitch, a demonstration of clout to impress its clients and competitors. But it also was a glimpse at where politics is headed, at least until the next recession. Entrepreneurs are in, especially if they’ve got a high-tech gloss. Politicians want to hobnob with them and are trying to speak their language. It’s been a century since ““captains of industry’’ have been cultural icons. But now the guys who write code - or sell it - are can-do role models.
Washington the state is in; Washington the district is out. The capital seems intellectually dead, its denizens reduced to making accusations and avoiding tough choices. By comparison, the archipelago of innovation from San Jose, Calif., to San Juan seems full of real risk-takers, refreshingly optimistic compared with the Beltway or Wall Street.
In politics, the private sector is cool - and not just in right-wing circles. The notion that wealth is a stigma has all but disappeared: millionaires hold nearly half the seats in the U.S. Senate. Ross Perot broke the billionaire barrier. Forbes followed. Now even Democrats have moguls. One of them, Northwest Airlines chairman Al Checchi, wants to be California governor. Candidates who don’t have their own money have lost any reticence about asking for it. They flock to regions of rapid economic growth, where there’s cash on hand and a demand for Beltway connections. Some of the best new hunting is in the Northwest: even the penny-pinching Gates gave $77,000 in Microsoft money last year to both parties.
Gates and company claim that their interest in politics is limited to making sure that well-meaning but ignorant regulators and congressmen don’t muck up their business. But with Gates, worth an estimated $20 billion, nothing is as casual as it seems. On the summit stage, he looked the part of disheveled nerd. Up close, you could see his shirt was a silky ecru, his brown shoes fancy loafers: geek deluxe. Gates has clearly thought broadly about the impact of his technology on politics. He thinks the Internet will create ““friction-free capitalism,’’ eliminating the ““middlemen.’’ It can do the same for government. He told NEWSWEEK that he had read accounts of the use of referendums in Switzerland - a form of ““direct democracy’’ that he says he distrusts, but wants to study. At one summit session, a panelist said a ““spontaneous order’’ is emerging in global digital commerce that will render politicians and regulators obsolete. ““That seemed kind of extreme,’’ Gates said with a laugh. Better, in the meantime, to invite Al Gore home for dinner.
title: “The Microsoft Primary” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Steven Miller”
Still, the unpublicized tete-a-tete was part of a delicate political dance between the software giant and the Republican Party. Each has something the other wants. Dollar signs in their eyes, GOP leaders covet big political contributions from Microsoft coffers. In turn, Microsoft execs, plagued by the Clinton Justice Department’s lawsuit, hope that a Republican president and Congress might shut down efforts to punish the company.
Bush has signaled that he would likely be more sympathetic to Microsoft than Bill Clinton; the governor says he prefers “innovation over litigation.” And Republican leaders have gone out of their way to assure Gates that Microsoft would have a bright future if the GOP ran Washington. Arriving on Capitol Hill last week after an awkward session at the White House with Clinton, Gates was given a hero’s welcome by GOP lawmakers. One Republican congressman told Gates he was planning to give a share of Microsoft stock to his 9-year-old godson. Emerging from a session with Gates, House Majority Leader Dick Armey told reporters he’d rather see the Justice Department broken up than Microsoft.
Just a few years ago, Microsoft executives virtually ignored national politics, boasting that they paid little attention to what was happening in the “other” Washington. The Justice Department lawsuit quickly changed that. Since 1997 the company and its top employees have doled out $1.8 million in political contributions, much of it unregulated “soft money.” More than two thirds of that cash has gone to the GOP. At the Capitol last week, Republican Rep. Tom Davis, the party’s chief fund-raiser in the House, asked Gates why the company hadn’t given even more to the Republicans. “I’ll look into that,” Gates said.
Microsoft spokesmen stress that Gates and the company aren’t pinning Microsoft’s future on the outcome of a single election. And Bush was decidedly cautious in his reaction to the court’s ruling last week, insisting he shouldn’t comment while the matter was still unsettled. (Al Gore was similarly vague about the decision, even while the Clinton-Gore Justice Department was proclaiming the ruling a vindication.)
Behind the scenes, however, some company officials have forged a quiet alliance with Bush. Microsoft’s chief operating officer, Robert Herbold, is an aggressive Bush supporter. He advises the campaign on technology issues and sits on its finance steering committee. After Bush toured Microsoft’s Redmond campus last summer, Herbold threw the governor a fund-raiser that attracted many Microsoft executives. Bush’s top money men are now counting on plenty of cash to come. At the Capitol last week, one House Republican asked Gates if he was looking forward to a new administration taking over the Justice Department. Gates nodded in agreement. That, he said, would be “helpful.”
