WASHINGTON – John McCain is coming in for a lot of ridicule this week in the blogs. The good news for him is that he doesn't know how to find any blogs so he won't be reading the criticism.
Oh wait – that's why he's coming in for the ridicule. He made the mistake of confessing to The New York Times that he is not very adept at traversing the Information Super Highway.
In fact, he can't even find the entry ramp.
This still doesn't make him as bad as one of his Senate colleagues. Ted Stevens, the 84-year-old Alaska senator, will forever be remembered for his 2006 description of the Internet as a “series of tubes.” And McCain at least knows there is only one Internet; he was not misled by President Bush's comments in both 2000 and 2004 that he was aware of reports “on the Internets.”
But it still doesn't bode well for a presidential candidate who doesn't want to be tagged as old to display ignorance of something like the Internet that is so central to the lives of millions of Americans. And that is what McCain did in an interview published last Sunday in the Times. Asked what Web sites he regularly reads, he said that his aides “show me Drudge” and sometimes they show him Politico and RealClearPolitics.
Prompted by an aide, he added that they also show him the blog written by his daughter, Meghan.
Asked if he goes online by himself, he responded, “They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. ... I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter's blog first.”
McCain also confessed he doesn't have a BlackBerry, something that marks him as a rarity on Capitol Hill where many members of Congress are addicted to their BlackBerrys.
But he is not alone as a politician shielded from aspects of modernity by his job or his staff. President Dwight Eisenhower may be the most famous example of that. Ike had conquered Europe, defeated Hitler, and led the largest invasion forces in world history. But he was brought down by the lowly telephone.
“For many decades his idea of making a call was to pick up a phone and say, 'Operator, get me this person,'” said Ken Collier, a professor at Stephen F. Austin University and an expert on Eisenhower. “He didn't have to dial a phone. But as he was getting off to Gettysburg in retirement, suddenly he had to dial it himself.”
According to historians, Ike had never before heard a dial tone, which had only been in use for a few years.
According to the National Park Service: “Upon lifting the receiver and being confronted with a dial tone, the president began to repeatedly press the dial tone button. When that achieved no results, he hung up and began turning the dial as though the phone were a safe. He finally gave up and turned to the (Secret Service) agent for assistance. The agent recalled that the president spent the next hour happily calling all his friends, enjoying the phone as though he were playing with a brand new toy.”
With that historical precedent, there is hope for McCain. Who knows? If he gets elected, maybe he'll become the first presidential blogger. Assuming, of course, that all the tubes can fit into the White House.
