George WWW Bush? Hardly

In one corner we have Al Gore, who knows an awful lot about the internet (he helped invent it, didn't you know?) As such he feels it is his right - no, his duty - to intervene to make the new economy an even better place to be.

In the other corner, George W Bush knows very little about the web, isn't interested in finding out and is more than happy to let those geeks in Silicon Valley get on with whatever it is they do.

Mr Can Do versus Mr Whatever.

As our story, 'Bush victory may ease Microsoft worries', demonstrates, many commentators believe the regulation-happy Democrats will be replaced by a more relaxed Republican regime.

Good news for Bill Gates. And good news, too, for executives at AOL and Time Warner who are having a hard time persuading the powers that be that their mega-merger is nothing to worry about.

According to a man who worked with Al Gore in the White House, the reality is somewhat different. Mike Nelson believes "there's a feeling among Democrats and Republicans that we don't want to screw this up" - 'this' being the new economy in which the US leads the world.

As a former FCC director, Nelson says it is unfair to categorise Gore as interventionist and Bush the polar opposite. Much of the work of the FCC under Clinton/Gore was to remove unnecessary red-tape, not add more rules.

Yet there is no getting away from the paradox that you need regulation for a deregulated market to thrive. Those in the UK who criticise Oftel for failing to force BT out of its anti-competitive ways, tacitly buy into this argument.

Nelson insists there are more differences over high-tech policy within the parties than there is between them. That may be so, but it is hard to believe a Bush administration wouldn't find more sympathy with the likes of Microsoft and AOL. And that's because unlike Gore he doesn't really understand the dynamics of an industry that coined the phrase 'co-opetition'.

If Bush wins he better find advisors quickly who understand as much as Gore.

If he doesn't, he may make some big mistakes simply by doing nothing.