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Wednesday, 12 November 2008 15:19 |
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Barack Obama will be the best President of my lifetime and I'm not young. I'll be at the inauguration with tears of joy in my eyes if I can find any way to get tickets. However, my reporting will continue to see him whole. He's surrounded by great people, but many are politicians who have made compromises. The likely FCC chair is brilliant, but may be hindered by ten year old ideas
that won't work because so much competition was destroyed since 2000. I'll continue to expect more from those I respect most. Some Obama bits you may not know
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He discussed rural broadband in the debates, and has been strong on Net Neutrality. The Net neutrality debate was partially won in the U.S. a while back. AT&T backed away from the CEO's “They are not going to use my pipes” and Verizon seconded the pullback. The Comcast decision puts some of the power of the FCC behind enforcement. That will prevent the most egregious attempts to control the net, although some crucial battles are still underway. Now, AT&T and Time Warner Cable are trying to circumvent policy rules with ridiculously low caps that have no economic justification and are clearly anti-competitive. AT&T is trying to keep total control on wireless, however.
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Obama's victory was narrow and absolutely did not reflect a major shift by American voters. His vote total, 53%, is only a few points above Gore or Kerry. Only one in 25 voters shifted to the Democrats, remarkably little. The London Times suggests that's a remarkably poor showing for the opposition during the worst economic crisis in generations. The U.S. has a “winner tales all” system, less supportive of minority rights, so Obama's party has great latitude for the next few years.
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Race played an important role in the campaign, Adam Nossiter of the Times reports from Vernon Alabama, where over 90% of the whites voted against Obama.
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Obama's finance director and national co-chair is former AT&T lobbyist Bill Daley and AT&T Board member Laura Tyson is on the transition team. Both were active when AT&T cut capital spending in half, the most serious blow to Internet capability in the U.S. in the last decade and the opposite of what we need for a recovery. Tyson, an excellent economist close to the Clintons, is looking for a senior job in D.C.
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McCain's ties were even closer, with AT&T lobbyists Charlie Black and Rick Davis running the campaign. Deputy campaign finance chairman Wayne Berman was a Verizon lobbyist, and there is an additional long list. There's no reason to see conspiracy there; both AT&T and McCain wanted the best political operatives, and Black is extremely effective. That said, I believe McCain an honest man who would not have been owned by the AT&T proxies.
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