Just last week,
many of the country’s tech leaders signed a letter arguing “Trump would be a disaster for innovation." Signatories include Vint Cerf, who helped to invent the Internet, Steve Wozniak,
the man who helped to invent the personal computer, and local Qualcomm founder
Irwin Jacobs, who helped to invent the smart phone. These people understand
innovation and the Republican Party’s presidential candidate alarms them.
This week the party faithful gather in Cleveland to present their nominee. The party's first president was Lincoln and since then the parade of candidates has included Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush, and now Trump. It's easy to think the party's struggles are because of increasingly weaker candidates; it might be that it's instead because of increasingly weaker policies.
Once upon a time, the Republican Party was the voice for tech leaders and their policies fed progress.
The Rise
Republicans emerged
as the anti-slavery party in the late 1800s. They were the progressive party on
two counts: they were more humane and they were the capitalists who believed in
investment and innovation as a better route to prosperity than enslavement. Northern
Republicans created a new economy.
The industrial
economy made regional economies national. Railroads let big factories sell
across state lines. In this new reality, the notion of states’ rights that
complicated things like enforcing contracts across state borders became as quaint
as sewing by hand.
When the South
seceded from the Union, the Northern – largely Republican – representatives passed
a flurry of legislation that created the modern corporation and expanded
interstate commerce, laying the foundation for unprecedented prosperity.
Between 1861 and
1933, Republicans had the White House 72% of the time. In 1865 the economy was
not much different than what it was in 1776; by 1933, the nation had automobiles,
electricity, telephones, and radio. Capital was king and Republicans were
presidents.
The Fall
Since then, the
economy has evolved more rapidly than the GOP. The region that now leads the
world is Silicon Valley and it represents a new, entrepreneurial economy that
is different in many ways from the industrial economy. Detroit made cars. Silicon
Valley makes companies. Wages there (specifically, Santa Clara County) are about two-thirds higher than the rest of the country, and the region has created trillions in wealth.
Every politician approves
of Silicon Valley but it doesn’t approve of every politician. Republicans have struggled
there.
In California’s 17th
in 2014– a Congressional district that includes Santa Clara and headquarters
for Apple, Intel, Yahoo, and eBay – no Republican candidate won enough primary
votes to compete in the Congressional general election. The same happened in
District 14, which includes Stanford, and headquarters for Alphabet (Google)
and Facebook.
Immigration and
social traditions are two reasons Republicans struggle in the Valley.
Depending on how
it is measured, immigrants are members of 25% to 50% of tech industry’s
founding teams. These companies aren’t part of a national market: they are part
of a global market that includes customers, employees, investors, and partners.
They connect countries rather than wall them off and they aren’t going to
support isolationist policies.
Social tradition
is another issue. San Francisco’s government became the first to officially
recognize gay marriage. The folks in startup friendly regions like Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado realize that the boundaries
between technology innovation and social change are fluid. When they talk about
disruption, they might be talking about Uber or gay marriage.
The
entrepreneurial economy will challenge any political party that is nationalist and
socially conservative. (And of course Donald Trump’s aversion to free trade is
yet another reason for the Valley to recoil from the GOP.) To adapt, the Republican
Party would have to abandon so much of what now defines it.
Many Republicans
will rightfully argue that they, too, embrace entrepreneurship, global markets
and the disruption that comes with this. As this year’s primaries revealed,
though, such Republicans are now a minority within the Party.
It’s possible that
advocates of the new entrepreneurial economy won’t affect the outcome of this
election and as a nation we will opt for candidates and policies that make our
economy more closed and less innovative; the policies that make a country more
prosperous are not always the most popular.
Still, one hopes
that forces within the Republican Party are studying Silicon Valley because
until the GOP adapts to the new realities it represents, the GOP will represent
the past of this great country and not its future.
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This just in from Clare Malone at 538, a different take on this theme.
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