Silicon Valley Gets Potomac Fever

It also hopes to reach into both parties. Worried that it is becoming too identified with Democrats through the connection to Gore, the group has recruited Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, an unwavering Republican, as its cochair, and hired Dan Schnur, the sharp-tongued former press secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson, as one of its consultants. "You can drink beer with Al Gore, but if Jim Barksdale can have drinks with Trent Lott as well, you've doubled your chance of success," says Schnur.

Still, the group's center of gravity seems clearly located on the Democratic side -- at least the postideological New Democratic synthesis that Clinton constructed after the Republican landslide in 1994. Most of the key figures, like Doerr and Polese and Cook, supported Clinton in 1996; many of them are likely to support Al Gore's campaign to succeed him. But the allegiance is more to a set of principles -- social tolerance, education reform, fiscal restraint combined with targeted government investments -- than to either party. "People will flow to where the new synthesis is," says Cook, "not traditional partisan roots, because the traditional roots are not as meaningful as they once were.''

The Valley Meets the Beltway

In brilliant late-afternoon spring sunshine, John Doerr is standing in the driveway just outside the press room at the White House. Standing beside him is Kim Polese, along with Delaine Eastin, the California superintendent of schools, and U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Five television cameras and a dozen reporters, busily scribbling in notebooks, cluster around them.

Doerr is still faintly vibrating with the buzz from the afternoon's event in the East Room. Over 100 high-tech executives, sitting on the gold chairs usually used for press conferences, had cheered as President Clinton renewed his call for states to embrace national education standards. Sitting just a few feet from Clinton and next to Al Gore at a table at the front of the room, Doerr became so impassioned when it was his turn to speak that he pounded his fist on his notes, promising that the executives would lobby every governor in the nation to embrace the idea. When the event was over, Clinton waded into the crowd to shake hands -- crutches and all. Everyone filed out feeling virtuous and important.

Now Doerr is in the driveway taking questions from the press. One reporter wants to know why there isn't anyone from Microsoft on the list of executives endorsing the idea. No particular reason, Doerr says; there just wasn't much time to organize the event and no one from Redmond responded quickly enough. Just as Doerr finishes, Marc Andreessen walks by, hulking over him in a natty cobalt shirt, jet-black suit, and silver-and-black tie. "Actually," Andreessen says dryly, "they just haven't figured out how they can monopolize education yet."

That exchange helps explain why groups like this often have difficulty making their way in Washington. Doerr's response reflected the belief common among well-intentioned outsiders that good ideas can bridge all boundaries. But Andreessen's biting edge reflected a sensibility common in the political world itself, where contending interests, some of whom actively wish each other harm, carry clashing agendas into daily combat.

Like many reformers, the Silicon Valley techies instinctively present their ideas as beyond politics. And like many reformers, their sentiment is hopelessly naive: no public policy is truly beyond politics. But if Doerr and his allies build the kind of organization they have in mind, they may be greeted not as saviors but interlopers and presumptuous dilettantes.

Already there are some in both parties who find the Technology Network's emergence unsettling. Some GOP strategists express concern that so many traditionally Republican executives now feel comfortable with Clinton and Gore. Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP consultant who ran Bob Dole's campaign in California, says, "You're already hearing Republican state legislators say, We're the ones who get you guys tax breaks, the ones who help you deal with issues like workmen's comp. Now you're turning around and supporting Democrats because they pick two or three issues that are sexy. Republicans are beginning to say, Why should we take any hits for your business if you're going to jump into bed with Bill Clinton and Al Gore?''

On the Democratic side, doors are opening for this group so fast the hinges seem loose. The senior White House staff and House and Senate leadership always find time to meet with the techies when they swoop into town. But Doerr and his allies are setting their boat onto the ocean when the waves inside the Democratic Party are becoming rougher. The Clinton-Gore vision of the Democratic party is coming under a counterattack from traditional forces -- labor, urban liberals, minorities -- and from Gore's rivals who are working to deny him the nomination in 2000. If the Technology Network grows as visible as Doerr hopes, it could find itself in the line of fire.