I Know about the Internet. Does This Mean I Can Be President?

There's an interesting competition going on between the candidates about who is more computer savvy, which some have charged is actually a form of covert ageism on the part of the Obama campaign.

McCain's difficulty with using the neologism "Google" properly in a sentence recently made him seem out of touch with the search habits of his constituency. A Huffington Post item quoted McCain as follows: "We're going through a process where you get a whole bunch of names, and ya ... Well, basically, it's a Google," McCain said. "You just, you know, what you can find out now on the Internet. It's remarkable, you know." In many ways, McCain's misuse of the article sounds worse than Bush's comments on "the Google," and McCain's admission that he is "illiterate" in computer matters and must depend on his wife for technological assistance doesn't make his case much better.

Obama peppered a recent speech with Google references and referred to his visit to the Mountain View company during a candidates@Google session. Yet the McCain campaign is apparently using "Internet chat" to appeal to female voters, so the Republican contender may not be a total n00b after all.