Weighing The Candidates On High-Tech Promises, Pitfalls

Cisco CEO John Chambers is a rarity in the high-tech community -- he's on the record with his endorsement of a candidate in the 2008 presidential race. And Chambers doesn't just back Republican John McCain, the Cisco boss is the Arizona senator's senior technology advisor.

Most IT executives and professionals, like their counterparts in other industries, are reluctant to make their politics known. They're in the business of doing business and that means minimizing the risk of alienating potential customers on partisan lines. As one San Francisco-based system integrator told us, he knows who he supports and he knows who his biggest clients support, "and I'm pretty sure they're not the same person."

That particular Barack Obama supporter was so concerned about going public with his politics that he declined an invitation to be named for this article. But more than a dozen of his high-tech peers, including top executives like Chambers, Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, as well as middle managers at IT companies, software developers, engineers, business owners, academics, analysts and bloggers were willing to tell us which issues concerned them as the race for the White House heats up, even if few wanted to name their preferred occupant.

In our broad survey of the IT industry, the core issues that kept cropping up concerned innovation, growth, regulation, jobs, education, taxation and sustainability. No surprise there, though policy recommendations from respondents were sometimes at odds with those of other interviewees. Such differences reflected particular interests but also different philosophies towards government -- ranging from the 'leave us alone' libertarianism of some, like IT business owner Oli Thordarson, to proposals for more direct federal investment in high-tech by others, like start-up founder Joshua Rand.

Meanwhile, a ChannelWeb online poll found that a plurality of our visitors prefer McCain (44.32 percent of the online vote), but combining the totals for Obama (41.08 percent) and Hillary Clinton (14.59 percent) gives the Democrats the majority backing of our readership. So how do the three major candidates actually stack up on the issues that concern the IT community? Let's take a look at what's on offer from each.

Next: Presidential Promises