Back in September, McCain’s top economic advisor, Holtz-Eakin, held up a Blackberry and announced that the device won’t be around if not for John McCain. “He did this,” Holtz-Eakin flashed the Blackberry. The internet (represented by Digg, Reddit and 4chan) ridiculed the statement. The McCain camp then clarifies the senator’s involvement in Blackberry.
This reminds me of Civilization IV where the internet upgrade icon as Al Gore’s head which I thought is just brilliant.
Carly Fiorina, a McCain advisor, was asked if she thinks Sarah Palin is ready to lead a company like HP. To which Fiorina responded, “No, I don’t, but you know what? That’s not what she’s running for.” Fiorina then clarifies that running a company is different from running a country.
It’s okay, ahem, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
I love to see what the McCain camp has to say about technology. They haven’t exactly been the tech guys in politics and, if anything, they’re rather anti-Internet. McCain himself confessed he couldn’t do these techie stuff.
Then, oops, yesterday morning, a couple hours before the event began, the McCain camp emailed to say that, actually, no, sorry, Holtz-Eakin can’t make it for the 12:30 debate. Apparently he had very important meetings to attend. Right. Apparently, though, he stepped out in the middle. At 1pm he was on MSNBC attacking Obama, trying to tie him to George Bush’s economic policies. Meanwhile, Reed Hundt ended up talking about complicated tech issues alone. The event was still fascinating (and you can see video here) but a huge opportunity was lost.
In short: the McCain camp chickened out. Spinning is easy; debating is hard. And defending John McCain’s record on broadband deployment, spectrum issues, and net neutrality is particularly hard. “If I was voting on technology issues only, even I wouldn’t support McCain,” said one Republican who I interviewed while researching the scorecard. (Source: Wired)
But no. McCain camp won’t be doing tech talks. Gobama 2008.
