U.S. Politicians Seem Not to Understand ICT

Reference: "Don't Know Their Yahoo From Their YouTube"
By Garrett M. Graff, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007

Lead: "In Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate, Sen. John McCain let slip a fairly stunning admission. The Arizona Republican assured viewers that he wouldn't need to lean on his vice president, George W. Bush-style, for national security expertise, but might 'rely on a vice president' for help on less important issues such as 'information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy.'"

U.S. Senator Ted Stevens referred to the Internet as a "series of tubes" on June 26th, 2006.

President Bush's similarly addled descriptions of the Web (he has referred to "the Google") have been pure gold for "Saturday Night Live." After Bush alluded during a 2004 presidential debate to rumors "on the, uh, Internets" about an Iraq war draft, Will Forte (who impersonates the president on the show) gleefully played Bush saying, "I think the problem here may be more of a question of getting rid of the bad Internets and keeping the good Internets. You know, 'cause I think we can all agree, there're just too many Internets.".....

Answering a campaign-trail question earlier this year, Mitt Romney, the former entrepreneur whose high-tech background should make him the best-informed candidate, didn't seem to know the difference between the video-sharing Web site YouTube (then the fourth most popular site in the world, according to Alexa.com) and MySpace, the social networking site (then ranked sixth).....

According to the Senate historian, the Senate is the oldest it has ever been, with an average age of 62 during the 110th Congress. Most of the leaders of Senate committees had already graduated from college by the time TVs became widespread in American homes in the 1950s. As the United States advances into the information age, it can't afford to have its leaders' base of knowledge be rooted in the industrial era.

last week's CNN/YouTube debate almost didn't happen, because the bulk of the GOP candidates didn't want to participate. The first debate, scheduled for September, was scuttled, and it took intense online protests by Republican activists to cajole the two front-runners, Romney and Rudy Giuliani, to show up. It's telling that the only two candidates who agreed to the original debate were McCain (that gaffe aside) and Ron Paul, whose maverick, straight-talking presidential campaigns have benefited enormously from online energy and fundraising.

Comment: As a 70 year old blogger, I am rather skeptical about the suggestion that our politicians don't know about the Internet because they are too old. I know about YouTube and MySpace, and I am older than most of the guys in question.

I suggest that the problem is that these big-wig politicians are too insulated from everyday life. They probably get their information from briefings from staffers, rather than from personal experience. That means they don't have a feel for how important the Internet has become in everyday life. But it is probably also symptomatic of lack of touch with the everyday life of Americans, a worrisome element in a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people"! JAD