Historically Symbolic Leadership

The sight of President Obama in his Sox baseball cap, working his newly encrypted Blackberry, is likely to be as symbolic of his Presidency as was the photo op of President Eisenhower on the golf course half a century earlier.

In the '50s, with an aging war hero in the White House, and the economy growing rapidly with the fruits of victory in World War Two, Ike captured the middle class dream of reaching your golden years successfully so you could hit the links. Furthermore, the sight of him conducting the world's business while relaxing on a golf course set an image that remains so solidly at the essence of the fantasy of the successful businessmen that it retains great power to this day.

Now comes Barack Hussein Obama. His sport is inner-city hoops, and, when told that he would have to give up the networked communication habits that so dramatically carried him to electoral victory -- his answer was "No, we can't!" He rose to power via that ever-present Blackberry, laptops, Facebook, and an aggressive email list in combo with a dynamic wesbite, Change.gov, that helped whip up that astonishing pent-up excitement visible on the Mall on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, his staff yesterday encountered a White House mired in the technological "Dark Ages," with few laptops, no personal or external email links, unplugged, analog phones with ancient cords, and desktops "working" on six-year-old Microsoft software.

Out with the old. In with the new. The Obama team will have to go all the way to the root and rebuild a White House IT system suitable for the 21st Century. Fortunately, by all indications, they've easily got the chops to do so. They're already patching together gmail accounts, cellular aps, and other web-based workarounds while more fundamental technological changes can be installed.

One interesting development -- the Obama team reportedly prefers Macs to PCs, which might be one reason Apple's stock is trading up today, in defiance of another general market turndown.