What exactly do ya 'do', here?

I saw a disturbing / funny news story this morning on CNN. Jeanne Moos did a story on the computer skills of McCain, Obama and George Bush. (Watch it here).

The gist of the story, if you don’t have time to watch it, is that McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer, he has his wife help him. Obama is fairly competent. George Bush seems to have his own set of issues (surprise!) with using and referring to technology in general. My favorite line in the story is when he says "you can go on the Internets..." during a speech.

But back to McCain. Really? Computer ILLITERATE? I understand that he has been a very important political figure for a very long time and probably has better things to do than surf the Internet and people to do other computer-related tasks for him, but seriously? If you’re campaigning to be the President of the United States, shouldn’t you at least learn enough to get by? And I know, he’s really old (check out http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com/ for a few laughs) and that a lot of 72-year-olds don’t use computers…but many do…and as the older woman in the CNN story said…IT’S NOT THAT HARD!

I’m not sure about you all, but I want someone to be president who is a superior intellectual being to more than 90% of the general population. I want someone who I feel is at least smarter than me. That would include having decent computer skills. Something I think most of us can agree is essential in today’s society. There's no programming necessary, but one should know how to check e-mail and look something up on the Internet and maybe create a Word document or Excel spreadsheet or two for Christ sake. If Presidents don't use computers, do we really need a President?

Maybe this is a dirty little secret of politicians everywhere. Kind of scary, I think.

One more reason we've gotta vote, people!!!

-Emily