Bill Clinton doesn't own a BlackBerry? WTF.

I was reading my August 2008 issue of Vanity Fair on July 9, and was surprised by this news in Gail Sheehy's Hillary Clinton campaign post-mortem:

Clinton's people had no idea how excited a whole new cohort of voters would become by a youthful figure who tapped into their vital hunger for change from the ground up. Obama started cultivating these new voters at low-cost events. The turnout amazed even his own team. What began as I.M.'s and campus meet-ups developed into a genuine social movement.

Such was the hubris of Hillary's team that they discounted Obama as a passing pop star to non-voters. Politco.com reported that at a November 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa, where 9,000 people showed up, 3,000 were already for Obama. "Our people look like caucus-goers," Mandy Grunwald sniffed, "and his [Obama's] people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook."

"Did they sleep through the 2003-4 election cycle?" asks an incredulous Joe Trippi, referring to Howard Dean and his new form of communication. As the pioneer who kick-started the bottom-up, low-dollar style of campaigning, tapping grassroots organizers and "newbies" for Dean through the Internet, Trippi was appalled that the Clinton machine stuck with a top-down, status-quo campaign. But the Clintons were out of touch with new forms of communication. Bill Clinton still doesn't use e-mail or own a BlackBerry.

Why hadn't they been using the Internet all along as a bulging cash register the way the Obama forces were doing? Hillary's team had held a retreat in the fall of '07 to huddle with propeller heads from Google and Yahoo, hoping to update their Internet savvy, but basically gave up on trying. "We tried direct mail but we couldn't come close to him," admits one member of Clinton's brain trust. "Obama tapped a different sensibility. They had a more, uh, viral [i.e., spreads by itself] campaign." The very word "viral" in his mouth sounded foreign.

I was simply going to post the excerpt and write that arts organizations can learn a valuable lesson from this, but instead I'm going to ramble a bit, because what I'm most interested in here is that Bill Clinton doesn't own a BlackBerry.

Sheehy's e mail/BlackBerry snipe as an indicator of how the Clinton unit is behind the times basically begs the question: in 2008, does someone have to be tech and internet-savvy to be an effective Commander in Chief? Which, of course, sends my convoluted brain directly to another question: in 2008, does someone have to be tech and internet-savvy to be an effective performer?

I realize that Bill Clinton has people to answer his e mails for him (as do many top artists), but I would think that carrying around a BlackBerry would be beneficial for a political candidate (spouse of a political candidate, and artist) on two, if not many more, levels. First, the supreme power of He's One of Us. I check my BlackBerry, Bill Clinton checks his BlackBerry! I'm too busy to be away from my e mail for ten minutes, he's too busy to be away from his e mail for ten minutes!! The BlackBerry is perfect for this, because Bill Clinton becomes one of us while maintaining Very Important and Busy Man status.

Second, the trendy tech-ophile factor. I always thought Bill Clinton was kind of a cool guy; he plays the saxophone! To find out that he doesn't like gadgets or even "use e mail" is pretty disappointing. If I were a political publicist (I'm sure they're not called "publicists" - maybe "Communications Strategists"), I would be terrified of people knowing this about my client, err, candidate. Insert "Bill Clinton had bigger PR problems for them to deal with" joke [here].

So does it matter if artists know about/care about/use technology? Hilary (one L, violinist...we're switching gears here, folks) has gotten press for having a blog (since 2002, for those of you playing at home), as has pianist Jeremy Denk, and former NYC Ballet dancer (and founder of The Winger) Kristin Sloan had her own iPhone commercial. Does that actually make them better performers, or just more relevant and easy to relate to public figures?  Is an interest in new technology audience-building and caliber-building, or just the former?

So which artists own BlackBerries? Who has their events at the Apple store instead of the Barnes & Noble? Who checks e mail? Who reads blogs? ...and who in the press and public cares?

FYI, Obama has an iPhone and John McCain is "aware of the internet", so we should be all good in November.