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Improving McCain’s appeal for younger voters
By Cameron Cushing | July 24, 2008
McCain’s obivously not doing well. It’s not a surprise. I have a few theories as to why. The first is pretty much beats the same drum that the articles do, kids want someone who seems “cool” and up to date. He’s not. He does have a good sense as to where to take this country, but he’s not the tech-savvy. In working with other older people, I find it’s not that they don’t / can’t understand it, their interest just isn’t in technology. Nothing wrong in that. The world will run just fine with some people not online. However, the rest of the story is that once a person sees how neat technology can be, they stand a good chance to getting hooked. Get McCain an iPhone 3G (Black, 16GB,) get it hooked up to his email and show him the ropes on it. He’ll be emailing, texting, and surfing the web in no time. He may even play a few of the games on the phone. (I’m thinking CubeRunner since he was a fighter pilot.) Not to mention the exposure he would get from carrying the iPhone, people would be buzzing about that for a good while.
There is one thing that really bothers me about his ratings with younger people assuming that they aren’t voting for him since he’s not tech savvy. Do they really want to pick a president based on tech-savvy? Is it really that important that he use the latest technology? For the most part, it’s really not that important if he’s not USING them. The question is whether he understands the implications of the technology. He could do himself a favor by keeping up on tech news (read techcrunch and wired perhaps) The threats to the U.S. extend far beyond conventional physical weapons. China has become a source of concern with their hacking abilities. (Read and Read) Other cyber issues include the role of open source software, copyrights and licensing of intellectual property, even the advances in nanotechnology and robotics. Carrying the right phone is not a presidential quality though. IT’s used as another distraction from the issues. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where the distraction won’t go away McCain does something about it. So go get your iPhone McCain and show that you’ve got better taste than Obama in cell phones.
Aside from technology though, what other factors might be causing McCain to fail with younger voters? Two things: he doesn’t play well into the gimme gimme culture, which is good; and he fails to sound good. The second may seem odd to readers, because the normal line is that he’s failing to articulate ideas. I’ll use an analogy. Obama is called an empty suitcase (not entirely true, there’s some pretty nasty things hiding in there.) But if Obama is an empty suitcase, then McCain is what one puts in a suitcase. He has plenty of ideas (some good, some not so good) but no clear presentation. It reminds me of the interview on Charlie Rose last night. In it, Rose interviewed several leading technology gurus (Walter Mossberg, Steven Levy, and Michael Arrington. They were discussing the future of Yahoo, would it continue under Jerry Yang or would it transfer to Icahn? One of the three made mention that Yang can’t come up with a clear description for yahoo, taking 10 or so minutes of winding around the purpose of the company. Google’s leaders can give “crisp” answers to that question, which alluded to the fact that they are more focused on the main goal of the company instead of just making a list of components. Read another post on that topic. McCain can learn from what is going on there and in his own campaign. He needs a to find the suitcase for all of his belongings.
Topics: Presidential Politics |