The Nation’s First Tech-Savvy President

I heard it first a couple of months ago and wrote a note to myself to take exception. So, yesterday I found the note and decided to do a little Internet searching. The media's sycophantic adoration for this urbane President is well known, but here surpassed in scope by its ignorance of the capabilities of former Presidents. Here are some excerpts from the love stories lying out there on the web. The first article found was titled

DAILY INSIGHT: How the nation’s first tech-savvy President made history at Memphis City Schools

Within which, I could find no supporting evidence of prowess, perhaps a hint with...

But the real test for the new network came toward the end of the school year. President Barack Obama was once again using technology to inspire the country. In the spring of 2011, he urged schools across the country to submit a video telling the country why they deserved to have him as their 2011 Race to the Top Commencement Speaker. Thousands of schools applied. The list was narrowed to six, then three, then one. Booker T. Washington High School (BTW), a Memphis City School, had been chosen! The eyes of the entire nation would be on Memphis.

 No, this was a story that was more about the improvement of a Memphis school's computer system.  The President's contribution was to ask for citizen's video applications.  That is the equivalent of asking for a phone call.  Have no doubt that the videos were screened, as they should be, and that the evaluation process refined to the final selection.  No technological skill required.


The next article that I found was titled...

Barack Obama: Our First Tech-Savvy, Multi-Tasking President?

Subtitled, and this is rich.....

Does brain specialization predict presidential elections?

The author, Mack Hicks, is a PhD in the field of Digital Pandemic.  Digital Pandemic sounds like one of the doctorates that you find advertisments for the school of in the back of comic books.  It could be real but it sounds like bullshit to to me.

The article blathers on about right and left brain proclivities, while couching an obvious preference  for the later. Eventually he gets to his point....

Democratic presidents are often products of legal and academic professions and tend to come from the intellectually elite class; a review of Republican presidents, dating back a half- century, on the other hand, reveals a general (Eisenhower), an All-American football player and coach (Ford), an actor (Reagan), a businessman-pilot (Bush senior) and another businessman-pilot and owner of a baseball team (George W. Bush).

Notice how he avoids Republican Presidents whose backgrounds do not comport with his definition.  For example, Lincoln, Coolidge, Taft and Hoover.  He does mention Lincoln later in the article.  I found other articles on the web by this Hicks fellow and pretty much all express love for the liberal lifestyle.   Then Mack adds...

Is this why they found their way to the political center? Al Gore and Jimmy Carter seemed more comfortable with left-brain strategies. They both got caught up in detail. Carter personally scheduled the White House tennis courts and neither of them could convince the public his "lust" was real.

President Carter went to Georgia Tech with hopes of becoming an engineer; he then transferred to the Naval Academy.  Both are what I would term as right sided institutions.

In the end, I have no complaint with President Obama.  The descriptions that are beinf applied are the fabrication of an adoring press.  Perhaps that is germinated by the actions of the Presidents press people, but that is their job.  He, President Obama, has shown me no more technical savvy than that of an intelligent 12 year old.  That is not meant as an insult, most adults in this day and age fit into that category.

Finally I found a site that had keyed into the same reaction I felt, this was titled....

Top 10 Most Techno-Savvy US Presidents

1. John Fitzgerald Kennedy: predicted the man on the moon by 1970 and was correct
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower: authorized the creation of NASA.
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: the first president to appear on television.
4. Harry S. Truman: ordering the use of atomic bombs.
5. Warren G. Harding: the first President to make an official statement over the radio airwaves, and the first to ride to his presidential inauguration in a car.
6. Theodore Roosevelt: first to ride in an airplane, first to be submerged in a submarine, first to own a car, and the first to have a telephone in his home.
7. Rutherford B. Hayes: the first president to have a telephone.
8. Benjamin Harrison: the first president to have electric lights installed in the White House.
9. Andrew Jackson: the first President to ride on a train while in office.
10. Millard Fillmore:  the first president to have running water and a stove in the White House.

The point I hope to make is that all Presidents are intelligent men, no matter how they are portrayed in the press.  George W. Bush was a military fighter pilot, constantly ridculed for lacking intelligence. Do you think it takes more technological ability to fly a jet or watch YouTube videos? As Presidents these men often have the unique opportunity to employ emerging technologies.