How about a Presidential Science and Technology debate?
"Dear Candidates for President of the United States:
We invite you to participate in Science Debate 2008, a presidential candidates debate about issues in science and technology policy that are vital to the future of America."
Shawn Otto, CEO of Science Debate has invited all the (remaining) candidates to an evening focused on science and technology on April 18 in Philadelphia.
It would be great to get the candidates to spend an hour or two on R&D funding, innovation credits, US science education,NASA plans, cyber-war, digital privacy, net neutrality, telco immunity, role of social networks in this campaign, H1-B visa, green computing, future of patents and more.
He has requested our readers call/write each of the campaigns and urge them to accept the invitation.
Also, if we can pull this off, I would consider flying up to Philly for the event and meeting others who also think this topic merits a lot more discussion before and after the elections.
Vinnie,
This would suggest that this election is actually about issues... which from my observation have been decisively lacking from the campaigns so far.
Posted by:jeff nolan | February 13, 2008 at 02:23 PM
precisely, Jeff, partly because the networks and th campaigns have kept the conversation at 50K level...they talk generically about the "economy" - even if it is for an hour , be nice to get down to our important and growing slice of the economy..
Posted by:vinnie mirchandani | February 13, 2008 at 02:31 PM
What I find interesting is all the candidates are talking about "Change", but they don't talk about how or what they are really going to change. In our form of government with its three way balance between congress, executive and judicial, change is something the president can't do on their own. Since congress controls the pursestrings, the president can prevent change, or initiate the discussion, but can't really make change happen.
If there was a science debate it would be great to ask a few follow up questions about how they are going to do what they say.
Posted by:Charles Bess | February 15, 2008 at 06:45 AM