The President-elect and ‘geek-in-chief’ isn’t happy at being forced to give up his favourite gadgets once he moves into the Oval Office.
Imagine you’re Barack Obama. You just ran “the most technologically sophisticated presidential campaign in history.” Your operatives played social media like a fiddle while coordinating field operations via text message, e-mail blast, and iPhone app. You proved yourself to be a modern info-executive with your 3 a.m. e-mails and your preference for reviewing docs on your BlackBerry. (Sure, clipping the ‘Berry to your belt was lame, but I assume that you did this to signal your gotta-check-the-inventory-back-in-Tucson regular-guy-ness. Nice.)
Now, you’re preparing to enter the White House, and your BlackBerry is about to be ripped from your clutches because of privacy and security concerns. Savor the irony: You captured the Oval Office by making technological history, only to find that you’re now required to govern like in the 19th century. Echoes of Lincoln, indeed.
He revolutionized the role of the Internet in electioneering. His campaign embraced Web 2.0 technologies. He’s promised to appoint a ‘chief technical officer’ for the USA and will broadcast his weekly Address to the Nation via YouTube.
But from the date of his inauguration on January 20th 2009, if not beforehand, President-elect Barrack Obama will have to part with his beloved BlackBerry smartphone and Apple laptop.
Concerns over email security and the need for all presidential correspondence to be entered into an official record, and eventually be open to public perusal, are expected to trump Obama’s own enthusiasm for technology.
It’s a tough break for the Geek-in-Chief, who according to The Telegraph’s list of ‘50 things you might not know about Barack Obama’ admits his ‘worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry’. (We do think it’s cool that Obama plays Scrabble and collects Spiderman comics).
Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod recalls that during the campaign, “(Obama’s) BlackBerry was constantly crackling with e-mails.” Obama also relied on his BlackBerry to review memos and briefing books on the go.
While previous presidents have also faced a similar ban on having their own BlackBerry, Obama is believed to have been keen to bring his laptop to the West Wing – something no President has ever done before. But this is also likely to be stymied by the same security issues.
In an interview with CNBC Wednesday, Obama made clear he’s not giving it up without a fight. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands,” the president-elect said. “You know, this town’s full of lawyers. I don’t know if you’ve noticedand they have a lot opinions. So I’m still in a scuffle around that, but itlook, it’s the hardest thing about being president. How do you stay in touch with the flow of everyday life,” he added.
