Candidates and the Internet

Garrett Graff was the first blogger admitted to a White House briefing and was Howard Dean's campaign manager, so if anyone starts to get the connection between politics and the Internet, he does. So it's interesting when he writes in the Washington Post that virtually all the candidates are clueless about the fundamental form of communications. Some of the mix-ups these people made - including Mitt Romney, who apparently confused YouTube and MySpace - are equivalent to a major politician in Henry Ford's day never having heard about the assembly line or someone in the 1970s being unaware of the fax machine.

But the closest analogy that comes to mind is something I once heard about the Patty Duke Show from the 1960s. Because Ms. Duke spent so much time working in the insular world of television, producers had to bring in "real" teenagers to show her the latest dances, so that she'd seem credible on the screen. I think what we're seeing is that politicians spend so much time in their own land, they never join us in this one, which is why they need translation: they literally don't speak the same language as the common people do. I've seen the same thing happen among top business leaders, who no longer mingle with the hoi polloi, otherwise known as the customers. No wonder they are so out of touch. Instead of hearing what their fellow citizens say, they have to make do with representations known as polls. No wonder they like dealing with lobbyists; they don't have to take a crash Berlitz course to converse.