The liberal blogosphere's outrage du jour? John McCain's professed "computer illiteracy." "Did the GOP really pick one of the last few cavemen among us who has yet to learn how to use the internet or e-mail?" writes commenter Tony over at the Politico. "Pathetic," add DailyKos's BarbinMD. "How long should it take to 'learn' to get online? It's one point and a click."

I understand the temptation to sic some snark on the senator from Arizona. Compared to Barack Obama--a 46-year-old who's comfortable thumbing his BlackBerry every "seven seconds" and teleconferencing by Mac laptop with his young daughters--it's easy enough to paint McCain as a doddering old dinosaur by, say, trotting out the clip where he admits that he's "an illiterate [who] has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get." Or the one where he uses the nonexistent phrase "a Google" to describe an Internet search. Or his assurance during an interview yesterday with the New York Times that even though his aides "go on for [him]" right now, "[he's] learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon." That latest outburst has earned McCain a round of liberal scorn over the past 24 hours, with Politico commenter Veritas claiming "it shows he is stubborn, stuck in the past and slow to learn" and Democratic blogger Jed Lewison wondering what would happen if  the famous 3:00 a.m. call arrived via email. Elsewhere, Jane Hamsher has written that "someone who is going to be expected to lead the country through the social, political, economic and communication upheavals that are happening as a result of the changes in computer and online technology very much needs to be able to use [a PC].” In other words, no email = incompetent president. Also, he's, like, old. LOL.

The only problem? This line of reasoning is misleading. For one thing, McCain's computer illiteracy doesn't reflect a lack of curiosity--it reflects a lack of necessity. Over the past 10 years, most adult Americans have encountered and explored computers primarily in the workplace, where the ability to communicate and find information on the Internet has gradually become a required skill. But McCain's job in the U.S. Senate--where all communication and information has to be filtered through staffers--has actually made fluency more difficult to achieve (or at least less necessary). When aides are responding to your messages and briefing you on every imaginable subject, the incentive to get online sort of disappears.

Secondly, even if McCain had spent some time surfing the Web over the last decade, it's highly unlikely that he would've amassed enough technological expertise to single-handedly craft appropriate public policy responses to the "upheavals" mentioned above. I spend about 10 hours a day blogging, Facebooking and researching politics online, and still I'd have nothing whatsoever to add to a White House task force on, say, social networking in the military. The idea It's unlikely that McCain, a 71-year-old senator, would get around to exploring anything beyond Yahoo! Mail, Google and Amazon is preposterous.* My parents--both more than 10 years younger than the senator--don't know what "minimizing" a window means, and they use an Apple laptop everyday. In other words, "normal" Internet ability is completely pointless from a policy perspective. That's why you hire and consult with experts, just as you would on farming or immigration issues.

Finally, George W. Bush gave up email when he was elected in 2000. The reason? National security worries. What's more, there's no computer in the Oval Office, and the president can't surf in the Executive Residence, either. McCain or Obama would certainly follow suit. Meaning that the 3:00 a.m. call would arrive by telephone, not email. And something tells me the senator knows how to operate one of those.

*Revised to more accurately reflect what I was trying to say. 

UPDATE, July 15: Reader W.B. disagrees:

The good Senator’s inability to comprehend, or even show interest in a simple, yet highly expanding source of information like the INTERNET or email is revealing.  Assuming he does not understand this technology, it is rather difficult to believe he’ll understand the importance of cyber-security in government and industry, for instance.  It will be difficult for him to properly make many decisions without a broad understanding of technology and its importance in our information age.

In response, I'd say that it's not fair to assume that he can't acquire a broad understanding of technology issues without being a regular emailer; in fact, as I wrote above, using the Internet doesn't really contribute to your understanding of tech-related public policy, and legislators (and presidents) regularly make laws about stuff they've never actually experienced firsthand (like, again, farming or immigration). Reader S.M. provides a perfect example:

[Supreme Court Justice] David Souter doesn't use email/computers at all really (I actually am not sure how often he uses telephones-- I know they had a hard time tracking him down when Rehnquist died and he was up in New Hampshire). But he wrote the opinion in the Grokster case, which as Jeffrey Toobin put it "showed an extremely sophisticated understanding of the very modern technology of file-sharing."

You might prefer a president who emails. (Especially if you're the type of person who's reading and commenting on blogs.) That's fine. In the end, basic computers skills are obviously preferable to utter illiteracy--all else being equal--and I can understand why McCain's apparent lack of curiosity on the subject (and the attendant symbolism) rubs some folks the wrong way. Still, I think it's inaccurate to say that his computer inexperience would hamper his presidency.