From Newsweek’s resident blogger, Andrew Romano, we get a quite entertaining piece of spin regarding John McCain’s numerous admissions that he knows little to nothing about computers and the internet.
Mr. Romano holds the firm belief that computer literacy has no bearing on the presidency and sums up his position on the matter with the always convincing “so what.”
So what? That’s it? In many ways this piece by Romano is a response to the outrage on the left that was stirred up by McCain’s admission that he’s “an illiterate [who] has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.” Or the latest, “I’m learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon.” But is it really necessary to defend McCain on this? It is 2008, the internet has been around for a few decades now, computers are more important to the daily lives of most americans now than almost anything else. And that importance will only grow in the near future, so it would be nice to have a President who knew enough about the internet to not refer to a search as “a google.”
The internet has grown in stature by leaps and bounds over the past ten years and it is assured to grow even more important in the next eight, so we at Rebel will have to disagree with Mr. Romano’s assertion that “it’s inaccurate to say that McCain’s computer inexperience would hamper his presidency.”
McCain’s computer inexperience and outright illiteracy would hamper his presidency, if for no other reason than the fact that he would be more out of touch with the public than any other President in history.
No, computer expertise is not a prerequisite for the presidency, but is it completely out of the realm of logic that when important computer related legislation makes its way through congress over the course of the next eight years (internet tax) that the leader of our nation might know enough about the technology to understand the debate?
