It was, some commentators said, the mother of all panders. When Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney told a Detroit audience that he would increase US federal funding in energy research, automotive technology and materials science fivefold, to a cool $20 billion a year, those inside the Beltway shrugged. In the Motor City, though, the idea had more play. Romney's upbeat, go-get-'em approach may have resonated with voters, and he duly won the Michigan primary the next day.
Romney is only one of half-a-dozen viable candidates for this November's presidential election, and his ambitious proposal is unlikely to be put into effect. It is nevertheless significant, because it points to how the United States may choose to respond to the danger of an economic recession that would spread to the country at large the woes already felt by many voters in Michigan.
President Bush and Congress are already scrambling to put together a stimulus package to stave off recession. Strategic responses — such as Romney's research plan — are now likely to feature prominently in the election campaign. Murmurs about 'competitiveness' that have been around for years will gain new salience
Romney's rhetoric will resonate with many physical scientists and engineers. "We spend $30 billion a year in the National Institutes of Health, and we lead the world in health-care products. In defence, we spend even more. We lead the world in defence products," he told the Detroit Economic Club on 14 January. "Why not also invest in energy and fuel technology right here in Michigan?" These sentiments come straight from the songsheet of the American Physical Society and its allies, which have long been pursuing a more modest proposal to double the amount the federal government spends on research in the physical sciences and engineering. But Romney's pledge of $20 billion promises much more.
This isn't some hick candidate pulling numbers out of the air: a former chief executive of Bain & Company, the Boston management consultancy, Romney knows what $20 billion is. And precedents suggest that a specific, costed commitment such as this one — made in the heat of the primary campaign — will be hard to discard if the candidate who made it is actually elected.
Even so, there is something unreal about Romney's proposal. Notably, it was made as part of a speech outlining the fantasy that the US motor industry can bounce back from its current emaciated state. General Motors and Ford have had some three decades of notice from Toyota, Nissan and Honda that it is time to shape up, and have utterly squandered every opportunity to respond. Significantly, Romney allied his research pledge with a call for looser fuel-efficiency standards — the signature cause of the Detroit industry, which has repeatedly signed its own death warrant by resisting innovation at every turn.
Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona), Romney's rival in Michigan, promised action on global warming and told voters that their old jobs aren't coming back — a message they probably didn't want to hear. There will clearly be political mileage in the sort of fixes Romney promised to Michigan last week. And as the United States' economic troubles deepen in this election year, there may be more snap prescriptions for industrial revival, some of them based on heavy federal investment in research and development.
As the United States' economic troubles deepen, there may be more snap prescriptions for industrial revival.
That represents a promise and a threat for scientists and engineers whose disciplines stand to benefit. The promise is considerable. As US physical scientists have been arguing for years, their work can help bolster industrial competitiveness, directly and indirectly. Thankfully, there is an even broader consensus (now shared by Republican and Democrat presidential candidates) that energy research is under-funded.
But Romney's disingenuous $20-billion pledge should be treated with scepticism. It is almost inconceivable that Congress would deliver that kind of money. Romney feebly suggested that it be diverted from federal job-training programmes, but these are scantily funded, and sure to grow, not contract, if recession arrives. And as for the justification of a comeback for Detroit, that particular movie ended decades ago and there will be no sequel.
