why the less wired candidate may be the better prez

Lee Gomes writes in this week’s WSJ Portals column on why we really shouldn’t give a damn whether or not the next President is insanely wired:

It’s a fair question to ask: Can someone who never touches a computer truly be in touch with what is happening in the world? The computer industry has worked very hard over the past few decades to cause us to suspect as much. But what about the opposite question: Does anyone who spends all day in front of a PC, forging a river of data posing as information, have any time to think?
. . .
The president wouldn’t need to worry about his email inbox; a staff would be standing by ready to handle it. Memos, position papers, summaries of newspaper reports and all the rest, would be delivered via printouts, since words on printed paper appear to have more of an impact than words on a flickering screen.

The president could use his computer time any way he wished: a favorite blog, YouTube videos, a mind-clearing game of Spider Solitaire. So many of his constituents would be doing the same thing at the same time, it would be a good way to keep up with the common folk.

The severe time rationing is necessary because a computer, far from making you more productive, instead loads you down with things to do, and it’s important for the machine to know who is boss. Most people don’t have the luxury of off-loading their email-reading chores to a group of competent assistants. It’s an office perk that presidents are still important enough to deserve.

The President of the United States is not a mid-level corporate executive. He is the leader of nearly two million non-postal employees in an unwieldy federal bureaucracy shaped by over five hundred yammering ankle-biters. Do you really want him to be shuttling between email on his Blackberry and skater-dog videos on YouTube?

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