If you're having trouble answering, it's not because you haven't been paying attention. When it comes to IT policy, George W. Bush and Al Gore are reading from the same playbook. And the reason Gore and Bush sound alike is not just because, like all presidential hopefuls, they'll say just about anything they think will win them votes. D.C. So far, the candidates have been using those connections to drum up support and raise money. Later, however, when the candidate metamorphoses into the president, and the things he says will actually affect the way we live and do business, the power of those advisers will grow.
Access is everything.
For Gore, it's a mix of old friends and new political allies. His inner circle of IT advisers is a tightly knit fraternity mostly made up of people who have held important staff or political posts during Gore's 23 years in elected office. As lawyers, lobbyists or corporate executives, almost all once worked or are currently employed by high-tech companies. Bush, newer to public service than Gore, is closest to an alliance of high-tech executives he has courted ever since winning the Texas governorship in 1994. Most of them are also relatively new to politics, becoming active in the past decade as government began debating how much to regulate technology and the Internet.