It Gets Better

Setting aside the Gore-esque gaffe that John McCain is singlehandedly responsible for managing the Internet by chairing the Commerce Committee, or the idea that regulating telecoms gives him insight into managing the financial markets. The Blackberry that Holtz-Eakin brandished in reporters' face is made by Research In Motion, which is a Canadian-based company. The Commerce Committee can do little more to RIM than regulate the airwaves it wants to use; it can do much less to the structure of its business dealings than it can to, say, Verizon. The whole thing just doesn't make any sense

It feels like the guys running then McCain campaign (including John McCain) are, underneath, a bunch of smart high schoolers who blew off their reading assignments and are now trying to BS their way through class discussion using only their wits, charm, and good looks.

Comments

[Stephen]

Telecommunications in the US SUCKS. Our internet is slower, our cell phones are bigger, less useful, more likely to drop calls, have fewer features and are more expensive, the amount of wireless internet coverage is a joke, and our choices for landline telephone and cable/satellite are pathetic. We pay far too much for far too little in all telecommunication areas compared to countries we look down on developmentally, let alone those nations we deign to categorize as our near-equals.

A friend of mine in China gets better cellphone coverage in the subway, at the Great Wall, even in freaking Urumchi - about as backwater as one can get in China - than I get in my own home. How typical that McCain wants to take credit for something that's been poorly done and doesn't benefit Americans.

Unfortunately, most Americans, even well-read and traveled progressives, still live in a fantasy world where US technological superiority is assumed.

[oddjob]

The whole thing just doesn't make any sense.

I've never quite felt this way exactly. Legislators do create an environment in which innovation can occur, and insofar as they do that I see no illogic in acknowledging that the legislators responsible have done so.

Having said that, I also think the two most prominent candidates who have mentioned this (Gore & McCain) have never done so in the right way, and so instead of the public acknowledging the small amount of credit that is their due the whole thing devolves into absurdity and ridicule.