Which US Presidential Candidate has the best tech policy?

Probably Obama. Net neutrality is a plus.

Not surprising…McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer (http://tinyurl.com/4zmfp8) so he’s unlikely to use political capital to drive an issue he doesn’t personally understand. Sure FDR wasn’t a nuclear physicist and JFK wasn’t an aerospace engineer, but each were talented enough to surround themselves with subject matter experts, something McCain has yet to do.

The elephant in the room is Obama’s horrible position on capital gains taxes , and horrible tax positions generally. (Massive tax rate hikes on capital and ‘the rich’ that are already weighing on markets and will kill the pace of innovation).
That alone makes Obama a bad President *for* high technology, whether or not he’s good *at taking advantage* of it.

Who is better *marketing* online? Obama obviously, just compare mybarackobama to McCain’s nonexistent social networking interfaces on his website. But this is more a matter of Obama’s $250 million spent so far versus less than $50 million by McCain. Somebody has a bigger marketing campaign.

But then check out
http://littlegreenfootballs.com on the racist, radical, anti-semitic, and just plain wierd folks who are supporting Obama on the Obama site. Giving your supporters a platform is a double-edged sword and the only thing saving Obama is the MSM seems intent on ignoring anything that my make Obama uncomfortable.
But the truth is out there.
http://no-bama.blogspot.com

Message and true-openness wise, McCain is beating Obama. More townhalls, more blogging calls, more press avails where he takes more than softballs and doesnt beg off. But it wont show up on your SEO results.

Tech policies mean crap in the real world. You want to analyze the candidates? How will the massive tax increases and social spending that Obama plans affect employers and people who actually produce something.

You are really starting to sound like an Obama talking points memo.

@Patrick

I would agree the increate on capital gains tech should be enough to scare those who are “high tech” people. HTose that make a lot of money and have to deal with captial gains issues should be praying that Obama is either a. Not elected or b. Can’t get this passed.

@Robert
Who cares about SEO in a political campaign? Wouldn’t I rather care about the issues the people runing stand for? Google rank is not everything in a political campaign.

Spencer: with one difference: you can comment here.

First, I have no idea what a “tech policy” means. Second, either of them do have one, ot means nothing, since they can’t simply wave their hands and implement it. You’d do by asking what the Senators from your state what their “tech policies” are. They have more power than the President to do anything here

McCain admits he’s computer illiterate. That alone makes him unqualified to be president, since he lacks an essential skill for living in the 21st century.

I wouldn’t vote for a candidate who had a tech policy, because there is nothing in the United States Constitution that authorizes the existence of such a thing.

@Robert
This is a pretty broad issue, but I like where it’s headed, because there are plenty of people concerned with data monitoring, commercial/governmental privacy issues and censorship — not to mention identity theft, which many believe to be made easier online.

@Jonathan
By no means am I an SEO super-enthusiast, but I would say that SEO matters quite a bit in political campaigns. In this case, and many other searches for political stances online, Barack Obama’s official campaign site ranks in the top, or top 3 positions. That puts him at an extreme advantage amongst a segment that is actively trying to learn about the candidates a.k.a. those more likely to vote.

By being in the first few rankings, he is more likely to have an opportunity to give his stance — albeit brushed over by his campaign staff — rather than having pundits getting the first crack at fact-finding, likely voters.

Craig

“Well, assuming that they both have a tech policy (I don’t know that for sure yet, but they both should in today’s world) there’s one candidate that has much better SEO than the other.

I’ll let you click the links and figure out which one it is.”

Or perhaps Obama is the recipient of much more linkage in the tech blogosphere.

As for Obama’s pledge to raise the capital gains tax, I would expect that idea to get thrown under the bus (like every other unpopular idea/advisor/pastor/etc he’s had so far in the campaign) once he’s elected.

Baraks one sounds very nu labor waffly (i can so see Tony B giving that speach ) about teachers not about tech in the wider sense.

I woul dbe more concerend about incrasing the status of enginners and increasing the suply of internal people to fill all thease post semployers suposedly have dificulty filling.

@Jonathon

RE Political SEO

If you search for an issue on G and your oponant is no where you have won search engines dont do balance

At the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference we hosted a session with people from the Obama and McCain campaigns discussing technology policy — there were some excellent Q&A. There’s a two-part videos here and here; Nancy Scola had a nice post on Personal Democracy Forum, as did Jim Puzzanghera in the LA Times.

oops, here’s the link for that first video. sorry about that.

Obama gets my vote. At least he knows how to use a computer.

Both are horrible choices (worst selections in a lifetime), but tech policy, assuming that even has a definition, won’t be a factor this year at all, it’s all about the ENERGY policy.

@Christopher
Worst selections in a lifetime? Really? Worse than W and Kerry? I beg to differ.

Gotta go with Obama b/c of Net Neutrality plus I don’t trust old people.

If you want to get more accurate numbers, put quotes around “tech policy” and see what happens. More accurate results, and you can actually find tech policies, not just pages with tech and policy.

Obama’s results are his position on this website, but also CDNs and other duplicates. McCain has links where he spoke at Google and tech reporters about him.

Frankly though, I’m not going to vote by SEO rankings.

Hey Scoble, I did a post about this last month – highlighting their views on some current tech topics.

http://www.dotcult.com/presidential-candidates-views-on-technology

Very interesting I guess …

Remember this great trick by Mike D over at Mike Industries?

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/hacking-a-more-tasteful-john-mccain

You would think that after that debacle, that JM would have engaged some bright young minds to keep him rolling forward.

This is an interesting by-product perhaps of more spent early by Obama. But will it be an ongoing battle? Now is the time to gain SEO if it matters.

Ironically JM’s page only comes up third if you search for: da151a1c-733a-4dc1-9cd3-f9ca5caba1de

http://www.google.com/search?q=da151a1c-733a-4dc1-9cd3-f9ca5caba1de

Now that seems like a sufficiently particular search that you might get it … but you don’t.

BTW, a big buzz of the buzzer for the folks who only vote on “social spending.” Hey, I loved the ’80s too, but I grew up.

Mr. McGuiness,
You know what a Semite is? It’s a person of SEMITIC stock, regardless of religion. Not necessarily Jewish. Indeed, most Semites are Arabs, like me. What, then, would an anti-semite be? Somebody who hates Semites, including Palestenians, Lebanese, Syrians. Who hates Semites? All those who scream so loudly of anti-semitism whenever someone criticises Israel for bombing Lebanon, bulldosing homes in Palestine, denying Gaza food and water, constructing its apartheid wall through the West Bank, expanding Camp Ariel on more and more Jordanian land.

Relax, Prolific Programmer.

Antisemitic does not mean ‘against all semites’. The word has its own noble history. It was coined in mid-19th-century Germany as a fancier word for Judenhass (jew-hatred) and refers only to jews, not to the Arabs who were allies of the government of Germany when it pursued its most sincere judenhass policies. See wikipedia on antisemitism.

As is often the case in language, parsing a word does not give its true meaning. Does women mean woeful man?

Not to be snide, but Jordanian land has been in retreat for some time recently. In the 1920s they had a big sandy country called ‘Arabia’.

Robert, weren’t you shilling for John Edwards’ campaign last year? What did you think of his tech policy and how does it compare to Obama’s and McCain’s?

@Nick, yes two of the worst in history. Why? Because they are both sitting Senators. This country has only elected a sitting Senator twice before. This country traditionally elects governors because they govern, which is what Presidents do. Senators don’t have experience governing. Even more scary is the likely win is a rookie Senator that has not even finished his first term and was never able to introduce a bill that got passed.

Electing Obamessiah would be like choosing Mark Zuckerberg to replace Jeff Immult as CEO