"Six-packs, automatic transmissions, and the American Express card were all introduced after he was born, not to mention computers which McCain admits he doesn't use," begins the AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in an analysis of voters' concerns about the Republican presumptive nominee's age, seventy-one. Thirty-eight percent of voters recently told AP-Yahoo News pollsters that they think Arizona Senator John McCain is "too old." Newsweek.com accentuated Alonso-Zaldivar's obsevations by running his story under this headline: "Born before computers, McCain is 'too old' for some."
But the only source that indicates Alonso-Zaldivar's technological remarks are more than a glib lede is Joe Quint, founder of thingsyoungerthanmccain.com. Alonso-Zaldivar doesn't quote him, however, but simply summaries his remarks, "Quint, a Democrat, said he doesn't believe septuagenarians should be disqualified from the presidency, but age should be part of the discussion."
But the quotes Alonso-Zaldivar uses to bring the polling statistics to life--both from voters and experts--frames the "discussion" of McCain's age in a way that has nothing to do with technological change. Instead, the implicit question is, Is McCain too senile for the job?
A quote from American University communications professor Leonard Steinhorn articulates the supposed worry of Americans who "wonder whether [McCain]'s going to have the vigor and the health as president." Schenectady Republican Virginia Bailey represents a "real person" with this concern. "Sure, people live to be 90, but you are not as sharp," she says.
McCain's best allies in this piece are geriatricians, whom, Alonzo-Zaldivar helpfully explains, work in a "specialty that focuses on the elderly." Dr. William Thomas at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Erickson School of Aging studies remarks, "The presidential campaign is full of chatter--much of quite misinformed--about the role of age.... People in old age are fully capable of imaginative and skillful work." Dr. David Reuben, chief of geriatrics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, offers this support: "As a clinician, I look at whether [septuagenarians] appear to be robust, whether their sentences flow, whether their thoughts connect, whether they are easily distractible.... McCain appears to be quite robust."
It's a shame that Alonso-Zaldivar doesn't take his technology quips more seriously, because it seems likely that Americans who are concerned about McCain's age are less concerned about his "robustness" than about whether he has become insulated from the changing world with which they have no choice but to struggle to keep up.
I couldn't help alternately feeling shock and pity when reading the technology section of McCain's interview with Adam Ngourney and Michael Cooper in this Sunday's New York Times.
He said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) and political Web sites and blogs.
"They go on for me," he said. "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, 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 that I need."
Asked which blogs he read, he said: "Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously. Everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics."
At that point, Mrs. McCain, who had been intensely engaged with her BlackBerry, looked up and chastised her husband. "Meghan's blog!" she said, reminding him of their daughter's blog on his campaign Web site. "Meghan's blog," he said sheepishly.
As he answered questions, sipping a cup of coffee with his tie tight around his neck, his aides stared down at their BlackBerries.
As they tapped, Mr. McCain said he did not use a BlackBerry, though he regularly reads messages on those of his aides. "I don't e-mail, I've never felt the particular need to e-mail," Mr. McCain said.
These blackberry-surfing aides are probably thanking the technology gods that their candidate didn't describe the internet as a "series of tubes."
Reading this, I could not feel sorry for McCain--though the delivery was understated, Ngourney and Cooper were obviously playing this episode for its humor. But Americans--especially older Americans still in the work force, who may have lost blue collar jobs and been retrained to use computers in order to feed their families--might be justifiably resentful of a man who can rely on staff to avoid the challenges they have been forced to overcome.
Doctors can alleviate any concerns about McCain's health. But Americans can rightly wonder whether he truly understands the faltering economy that he will have to steer back to health if he becomes president. McCain has already infamously confessed to not being "well versed" on economic issues. Experts can be called upon to handle questions of macroeconomics. But has McCain become so insulated as he has aged that he lacks a basic understanding of Americans' working lives?
A version of this article originally appeared on cjr.org
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Posted July 17, 2008 | 04:23 PM (EST)