For use: Friday, November 10, 2000 and thereafter

Future Shoes: "Techno-Smear"

by Michael Finley

Computer User Columnist

So, did you hear about the election? [Dodges a torrent of incoming vegetables, Styrofoam containers, and wadded-up campaign brochures.]

No, I have no grand summa politica that will wrap this past week up. I sat up all night -- all week -- with my heart in my throat, the same as everybody. The hell of it is, a guy like me only gets one vote.

But here's a parting thought. Al Gore ran into trouble early on with a handful of statements imputing more to himself than the media were willing to see imputed: that he had worked on a farm as a youth, that he was the basis for Love Story, and finally, that he had "taken the initiative, in Congress, of creating the Internet."

On the basis of those claims, universally hailed as ridiculous and implausible, Gore scored poorly in polls rating his credibility. Take away the credibility factor, and he would likely have skated to an easy victory -- a majority sided with him on the issues.

Instead, we (the media, in particular the opining class) clobbered him through the months of September and October on credibility -- and gave Bush a bye on his until the final weekend of the campaign.

And the sadness of it all is that Al Gore did slave on the family farm, was the basis for Love Story, and did, as far as Congressional action went, and so far as Newt Gingrich and Vin Cerf (honest-to-God co-creator of the Internet) were concerned, "take the initiative in creating the Internet." Gore was an Internet yahoo long before there was a Yahoo.

In the words of the great but cynical truth-teller Bertolt Brecht, "I thought that brains were good -- guess not."

And in the hallowed tradition of Martin Van Buren and Grover Cleveland (victims, like Gore, not perps), the electoral smear is alive and well in the information age.

On the topic of  technology: Why, if Al Gore really played a significant role in funding and developing the Internet, back in the 1980s, aren’t techies more beholden to him? You’d think Internet users alone would have put him over the top. His creation really is, as I'm sure you'll agree if you’re reading this, mega-neat.

On the topic of economics, my favorite recurring moment in the campaign was when George Bush said, "The vice president thinks prosperity comes from the government. But prosperity comes from the ingenuity and industry of the American people."

I must tell you about my mental processes each time he said that. Naturally, I couldn’t ask him anything -- Mr. Bush was, shall we say, not open to unscreened questioning during the campaign. But I wanted to brandish this rhetorical epee:

"If the current prosperity is caused by the ingenuity and industry of people today, was the recession of your father's administration caused by the slack-jawed indolence of the citizenry then?"

Of course, vice presidents don’t create prosperity, either. The deeper truth here is that our remarkable expansion of the past decade was propelled by two things:

• First is the Internet and information technology generally. It has revolutionized the world and moved us off the industrial square forever onto something very new, very open, and very rich.
• Second is the fact that two big, talented generations, the Boomers and the Xers, are bookending their money years now, piling up wealth as never before, and investing the excess in the system. Their earnings are our bubble.

We live in fabulously fortunate times, which Gore had little to do with, and which Bush, elevated finally to the top spot, would have little direct impact on.

So in this fractious week, after all our suffering together the past year, and our low-tech finger-crossing and high-tech vote tabulating this week, let's pause to remember the value of good luck, and pray our holds out a little while longer.