Hail to the techie: Do presidential computer skills matter?

NEW YORK — Does America need a tech-savvy, Web-surfing, thumb-typing commander in chief?

John McCain has taken heat for months online — and in a recent Obama TV ad — for admitting degrees of computer illiteracy and a recent personal push to catch up to the Internet age.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is often seen e-mailing with BlackBerry in hand and has a reputation for embracing technology. McCain's vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, provides another contrast — she is known for wielding two smart phones at once.

As politics play out in an era of rapidly changing technology, much has been made about the McCain-Obama digital divide. But do personal tech skills matter when it comes to running the country or making technology policy?

"Not particularly," said Michael Powell, the former Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a technology policy adviser to the McCain campaign. "The president of the United States is not the Twitterer in chief or a guy who's going to sit in the Oval Office checking Facebook pages."

The president "can help create the economic conditions that allow innovation and technology to thrive," Powell said.

He said McCain is well versed in communications and broadband policy, which is more important than "this silliness of who's carrying more devices on their belt."

As a practical matter, presidents don't need to e-mail, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland who has written books on presidential communications.

"They have a bevy of ways to communicate with people face to face," she said. "They meet with staff in person, speak on the phone and use video conferencing from a variety of places, including a renovated Situation Room with a state-of-the-art communications infrastructure."

But whether the 72-year-old McCain blogs or sends e-mail himself misses the point, said Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the techPresident blog, which covers how 2008 candidates use the Web. An adviser to lawmakers, Rasiej also led Democrat Howard Dean's Technology Advisory Council in 2004.

What matters, Rasiej said, is that McCain is just getting up to speed now, after years in Congress dealing with technology policy. He said that "betrays a lack of curiosity."

"We are watching the conversion of our world from a 20th century economy to the 21st," he said. "The president of the United States has to have a cursory understanding of information technology in order to make decisions accordingly."

Rasiej said he is not saying McCain is oblivious to technology and Obama is a tech genius. However, he said, Obama is "of a non-Baby Boomer generation, he Skypes with his daughters, he's created a culture within his campaign of embracing the technology as wholly as possible." He said Obama also was the first candidate of either party to publish a comprehensive tech policy.

Obama, 47, is widely perceived as much more connected to the "technology generation" than McCain, said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He is writing a book on how the Internet is changing politics.

Wagner said with the current economic crisis, that perception of tech savviness will not be a big factor in this election, but it will matter more "in four years or even eight years as the plugged-in generation becomes more and more prominent."

President Bush occasionally surfs the Web, but seems to have a more basic computer knowledge than most Americans, partly because using the technology is not routine in his job, said former White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

He said Bush used e-mail as governor of Texas to keep in touch with close friends, but stopped in the White House "out of concern that his private, social communications with friends would be subject to the Presidential Records Act."

McClellan said tech-savvy advisers can compensate for a president's lack of computer knowledge when it comes to making policy decisions.

He also said that, given changing times, the country now may be "witnessing the last presidential nominee who lacks basic computer and e-mail skills."

In 2006, McCain told Fortune magazine that he was a computer "Neanderthal" who doesn't type, with "rudimentary capabilities to call up some Web sites." In contrast, he called his wife, Cindy, a "wizard" who could print boarding passes and movie tickets.

McCain discussed his tech comfort level again in interviews earlier this year. He sparked online debate and mockery when he described staff visiting Web sites for him.

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon. ... I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer-literate to the point where I can get the information I need," McCain told The New York Times.

"I've never felt the particular need to e-mail," he said. "I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time."

His campaign later sought to update his tech image, saying that he uses an Apple Mac computer several times a week and can browse Web sites.

This month, the Obama campaign highlighted McCain's lack of computer skills in a television ad to portray him as out of date.

An Obama spokesman said then that given the economic importance of the Internet and issues like cyber security, a presidential candidate not sending e-mail is "extraordinary."

McCain defenders, including former White House adviser Karl Rove, cried foul, saying McCain's war injuries make typing difficult.

More online furor ensued, with bloggers resurrecting old news stories detailing McCain's physical limitations. It also prompted some computer users with disabilities to ask: if they use the Web, why not McCain?

"He's a proud man and this isn't something he necessarily is going to say a lot about," Powell said.

He said he has a high regard for Obama and his campaign's high-tech approach, but McCain's physical limitations "should be a little bit off limits."

For McCain, he said, typing on a BlackBerry or tucking a MacBook under his arm to Web-surf on the go "are slightly more challenging activities for him than they are for the rest of us."

Days after the ad flap, a top McCain policy adviser stirred the blogosphere again by waving a BlackBerry and telling reporters: "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create."

An aide later said the remark, which referred to McCain's Senate Commerce Committee work on telecommunications issues, was "a boneheaded joke" by a staffer.

Candidates should take care tossing around tech terms, Wagner said. He said when they say things like "it's a Google" — as McCain has — or "the Google" — as Bush did in 2006 — it makes them appear out of touch with the modern world.

Ken Herman of the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

On the Web:

McCain tech policy: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/cbcd3a48-4b0e-4864-8be1-d04561c132ea.htm

Obama tech policy: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/