All your innovation belongs to us

In a nutshell, this is the common theme of the 2008 election–one side insists that only the government can foster innovation and generate energy independence while the other acknowledges that private innovation has an important role, and should be justly rewarded.

McCain’s $300 million prize for car battery innovation earns nothing but scorn from the Democratics.

“The battery prize is another gimmick,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-San Francisco, said. “It doesn’t wash. We already know what we have to do right now: support renewable resources and support clean-car tax credits,” which McCain has voted against, she said

Barack Obama has also ridiculed McCain’s plan as a gimmick.

Sen. Barack Obama today ridiculed a proposal by his presidential rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, to offer a $300 million taxpayer-funded cash prize to boost advanced battery research.

“When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn’t put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win — he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people,” the Illinois senator said in a speech in Las Vegas. “That’s the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do.”

Surprising, when you consider that Obama’s own proposals include similar cash “gimmicks“. Is Obama jealous because McCain beat him to the headline?

In 2004, the $10 million Ansari X-Prize competition gimmick was won by a private American company and sent an ordinary American into space. Twice.

In defending his recent pivot on receiving federal campaign funds for the 2008 election, Obama described the nature of his fundraising as a “parallel public financing system“, ostensibly because the involvement of so many small donors lends “public” characteristics to his campaign finances. Conversely, Obama suggests that as President he would dismiss a similarly-conceived “parallel public energy independence system” developed by anyone less than an activist federal government. How telling.