McCain v. Obama = "Horse & Buggy v. NASA space ship"

By GottaLaff

Obama’s social network has nearly a million members. McCain’s has a sign-up that reads "Benefits of joining Team McCain include:"—with nothing following.

Photo: Composite image by Politico.com

While struggling to memorize his stump speech, John Sidney McAntiquity came across something behind the washboard next to his kerosene lamp: his wife's quill. He puzzled over the new-fangled writing device. After carefully examining it, a candle light bulb went off over his head: He could communicate to potential voters by dipping it in ink and stroking it across parchment in a series of symbols! Thus, the McAntiquity campaign was born.

When John McCain, 71, wanted Barack Obama, 46, to join him at a series of town hall meetings, he dispatched a messenger to hand-deliver the invitation. "You know, you could have just e-mailed this," Obama press secretary Bill Burton told the messenger.

"It's the difference between a horse and buggy and a NASA space ship," said Phil Noble, a veteran of Democratic campaigns and the founder of the nonpartisan political news site PoliticsOnline, comparing the campaigns’ respective approaches to technology. "Obama has given people the tools to create and run their own campaigns," Noble continued. "McCain is still a command-and-control, top-down candidate. Part of it is the difference in age." [...] McCain's response when Politico's Mike Allen asked him whether he used a Mac or a PC: "Neither. I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."

With that, he boarded the stagecoach, whipped out his harmonica, and played haunting strains of "Old Folks at Home" all the way to Kansas.

Obama has also built a formidable network of online supporters and activists. As of Tuesday, his my.barackobama.com social networking site had 926,000 members, and he had 946,568 Facebook supporters.

McCain, by contrast, had 141,183 Facebook supporters, and his McCain Space online sign-up contains the dispiriting sentence fragment: "Benefits of joining Team McCain include:" — with nothing following.

McAntiquity: "Change you can gum chew on."

The campaign's different relationships to the Web reflect the difference between Obama's background in community organizing and McCain's many years in Washington.

"When you've run as many campaigns as McCain has, you rely on what's worked in the past," said Caleb Clark, founder and CEO of WeTheCitizens, a conservative-leaning online software development company.

McAntiquity powdered his wig and polished his musket one last time before realizing he'd forgotten to mail off the handwritten parchment notices of his campaign event in the town square. Great. There went the Kansas stump speech. And the next Pony Express wasn't due for another 3 days.