So, according to the Washington Times, the man who bemoans the productivity of the ATM, President of the Future, Barack Obama, has some trouble using an iPhone.

So, according to the Washington Times, the man who bemoans the productivity of the ATM, President of the Future, Barack Obama, has some trouble using an iPhone. Not a big deal … except, of course, you might remember that in 2008 the Obama campaign attacked then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain for being computer illiterate.

�??Our economy wouldn�??t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,�?� Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer explained almost four years ago. �??It�??s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn�??t know how to send an e-mail.�?�

Well, via Drudge , we have the amusing headline “‘Befuddled’ Obama Has Trouble Using iPhone”:

But when White House trip director Marvin Nicholson handed the president his personal iPhone, Mr. Obama couldn’t get it to work. A reporter who witnessed the scene said the president looked “befuddled.” “It’s not clear he knows how to dial on an iPhone,” the reporter wrote in a pool report. Finally, Mr. Obama said, “Oh, I got to dial it in. Hold on, hold on. I can do this. See, I still have a BlackBerry.” The president then “had a little more trouble dialing,” the pool report said. The president then has more trouble dialing. When the call didn’t go through, he blamed Mr. Nicholson for having an insufficient cell phone plan.

Flashback: On September 12, 2008 , the Obama�??s campaign released an ad attacking John McCain for not knowing how to send an e-mail. The reason that McCain couldn’t send emails, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out at the time, was that Viet Cong had done quite a job on McCain.

This from a March 4, 2000 Boston Globe piece:

Our economy wouldn�??t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,�?� [Obama spokesman Dan] Pfeiffer said. �??It�??s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn�??t know how to send an e-mail.

This isn’t so much a reminder that perceptions of Obama as some sort of techno-friendly futurist are mythological, as much as it is a reminder that the perception that the president is above small, personal and nasty campaigns is a complete myth.