Who do you want in the White House when an urgent e-mail arrives at 3AM?

"It's just amazing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's very hard to even think about someone who doesn't know how to use the internet. It's like, 'Really?' My five-year-old niece can use the internet. She knows how to go to nickelodeon.com [sic] and play her games."

The interview could be politically damaging, he added. "The tough part is that if one of the concerns voters have is that you are out of touch with how they live, what they want, the problems they face, then this only reinforces that notion.

"He's a hero for what he did 35 years ago, but that doesn't necessarily make him the kind of president we want today. Here's somebody who is in many ways very disconnected from where people are."

I don't know about you, but what I really want in a president is a man who knows how to waste as much time as I do playing games on the internet. Or at least who know the price of a loaf of bread (even though I couldn't tell you, and I buy it all the time).

This also reminded me of the claim that Calvin Coolidge refused to use a telephone while in the White House. Is there any truth to that? I wonder if it isn't just an apocryphal leap from the story of how Coolidge learned he'd become president: he could not be reached by phone during a visit to his family home in rural Vermont.

But at least there's a thread of consistency here: Republicans are out of touch!