John McCain, Internet dunce

McCain has said that closing the digital divide -- the gap between people with access to digital technology and those without -- is one of his top tech priorities. Speaking to the Consumer Federation of America in 2001, he said it was "our greatest challenge in the 21st century." It may therefore be surprising to learn that McCain was one of the most vocal opponents of Education Rate (E-Rate), a program designed to provide discounts to schools and libraries to connect to the Internet.

E-rate, established as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, may have gotten off to a shaky start, but many tech experts agree that it has been a success. According to the Benton Foundation, nearly $19 billion in discounts have been provided to schools and libraries, and more than 90 percent of classrooms in rural, high-minority and low-income school districts now have Internet connections.

McCain opposed E-Rate in the late '90s, concerned about the impact it might have on the telecom industry. He mostly cited concerns about government waste and "inflated" costs. Groups such as the American Library Association were so outraged that they encouraged their members to contact obstinate senators, including McCain.

Over the next few years, McCain shifted his views on the program. He instead focused on making schools and libraries set up a filtering system to keep children away from undesirable sites -- a requirement opposed by libraries, school boards, civil libertarians, technology interests and even some conservatives.

"The prevention lies not in censoring what goes into the Internet," said McCain of his Internet School Filtering Act in 1998, "but rather in filtering what comes out of it onto the computers our children use outside the home." McCain's position was so strict that even former Sen. Rick Santorum, a hard-line conservative, proposed a more moderate compromise bill.

In a 2000 Republican presidential debate, McCain had the gall to take credit for wiring schools, despite his opposition to E-Rate: "We took a major step forward when we decided to wire every school and library in America to the Internet. That's a good program."

Not only did McCain oppose E-Rate, but he fought tooth and nail against the entire Telecommunications Act of 1996. The bill wasn't perfect, and has had a mixed record. As Lloyd noted, "Part of the concern was that there had been, frankly, too little debate about the act before the public, and that the broadcasters were getting extraordinary benefits without sufficient return to the public for what they were doing."

McCain was one of just five senators to vote against the bill, arguing that it was too regulatory. In fact, a common theme of McCain's views on tech policy is the belief that law can rarely be used to benefit telecommunications. Government intervention, for the most part, is bad. "Unless there is a clear-cut, unequivocal restraint of competition, the government should stay out of it," McCain said in 2007. "These things will sort themselves out."

At a 1999 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, McCain criticized the Telecommunications Act, arguing that it encouraged large mergers. "By redrawing the ownership and competition rules that govern the industry, it has created incentives, both intended and unintended, for companies to merge." But McCain did little to stop them.

"McCain was encouraging the notion of competition, but really did very little to limit consolidation," said Lloyd. Hundt added that McCain has "never successfully opposed any merger." At a Federalist Society debate in June, Hundt also challenged Powell, a McCain supporter, to name one merger the senator has opposed since 1986. Frustrated, Powell replied, "Well, I'm not going to attempt to do that. I think it's a cheeky argument."

In 2003, McCain also voted against a bill that would have tightened media ownership rules -- and, in theory, fostered more diverse voices -- and introduced a bill limiting the FCC's ability to regulate telecommunications takeovers. As Bloomberg's Christopher Stern wrote recently, "McCain sees the Internet mainly as a business and trusts market forces to foster innovation for society's benefit."

(After trying to talk to several McCain campaign advisors, Salon was told to contact his Senate office for a response. McCain's Senate office did not respond to repeated inquiries.)

More recently, McCain has sided with the telecom industry in the network neutrality debate. In 2006, consumer advocates supported legislation by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., that would have prevented broadband providers from creating a pay-for-play system. Telephone networks already operate on neutrality principles. Calls go through equally as well whether someone is calling her grandmother or Steve Jobs. But without net neutrality, say its advocates, the Internet would operate on a different model. Sites willing to pay large sums of money would be faster to access, generating more revenue for telecoms.

The CEOs of some of the world's most innovative technology companies -- including Google and Yahoo! -- wrote the House Energy Committee in 2006, worried that the "longstanding openness of the Internet" was being threatened. (Ironically, Whitman, who was then heading eBay, also signed the letter.) They urged the committee to adopt net neutrality rules that were "both meaningful and readily enforceable." Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog that endorsed both McCain and Obama in the primaries, called net neutrality "probably the most important issue in Silicon Valley."

McCain sided against competition and opposed Markey's legislation. In 2007, he argued, "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment."

McCain has boasted that he has "never done any favors for anybody -- lobbyist or special interest group -- that's a clear, 24-year record."

But the record isn't so clear. McCain's chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee has been good for large corporations, and they have rewarded him handsomely. In 2000, Washington Internet Daily, a trade site, reported that McCain was the "[c]lear leader in fund-raising from high-tech companies." Over those past two years, McCain collected $1.2 million from communications and electronics companies, including nearly $700,000 from phone companies and telecom infrastructure firms.

In 1998 and 1999, McCain wrote at least 15 letters to the FCC, urging members to take action on issues that had potentially major consequences for his campaign donors. For example, McCain wrote two letters in April and May 1999, asking the commission to make a decision on a $62 billion pending merger between telephone companies Ameritech and SBC Communications. The merger went through later that year. A few weeks before the April letter, Richard Notebaert, then head of Ameritech, co-hosted a fundraiser for McCain. He took in approximately $50,000. Just before the May letter, SBC and Ameritech officials contributed or solicited about $120,000 in donations for McCain's campaign.

At the time of the merger, SBC was a client of Davis, Manafort and Freedman, a firm run by McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis. (Davis is now serving as McCain's 2008 campaign manager.)

The current campaign cycle is also shaping up to be lucrative. U.S. Telecom Association president and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr., Sprint CEO Daniel R. Hesse, and Verizon chairman and CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg have each raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for McCain's campaign. AT&T executive vice president for federal relations Timothy McKone has raised at least $500,000.

McCain has steadfastly resisted using the federal government's power to ensure America's technological advancement. But that approach will not work as other countries begin to outpace the United States.

When McCain took over his second tenure of the Senate Commerce Committee, the United States ranked fourth in broadband penetration, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. In 2007, two years after he had given up that position, the United States had dropped to 15th in the world. The rest of the developed world, which chose to be pro-competition, is now racing ahead of the United States.

Americans don't expect the next president to be Twitterer-in-chief, but he will need to lead an increasingly technologically savvy nation and ensure that the benefits of advanced telecommunications reach as many people as possible. "Government doesn't need to manage the technological developments," Hundt said at the June Federalist Society debate. "But it ought to establish a rule of law where entrepreneurs can raise money and enter these markets."

Closing the digital divide and developing an equitable broadband strategy will be a significant challenge. Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America said McCain won't be up to the task. "Nobody believes if McCain gets into office he's going to fix federal communications policy," he said. "He doesn't have any credibility when it comes to [initiating] a government act. Obviously, he's trading on the capital he built up when he was the straight-talk express. But that capital is dissipating very quickly."