I don't mind that 71-year-old John McCain thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a border, or that he believes Czechoslovakia still exists, or that the war in Afghanistan appears to have slipped from his memory. He's no dumber than George W. Bush who was just fine in the view of most Americans until recently.

I don't even mind that Bush has remained at the same level of stupidity throughout his presidency — dumb as a button from start to finish — while McCain's mental best-before date is advancing so fast as to be apparent even in TV clips where he isn't speaking.

That isn't new for Americans, who claim to yearn for Ronald "The Napper" Reagan. The president is stupid; the president is old. No change there, then.

What bothers me is that McCain can't read this.

For John McCain does not compute. It's not that he doesn't go online, it is that he can't — even to do "the Google." He says Bridget and his other kids help him. "They go on for me. They get me Drudge. Everybody watches Drudge."

Which means that McCain thinks the internet has "shows" that you "watch" like TV sitcoms — and he doesn't mean YouTube either — not getting the concept of a "site" made by people "online" consisting entirely of "downloaded" clips that you can "link" to.

The clips can be as cute as a Swedish baby laughing like a battery-powered giggle basket or as momentous as Barack Obama giving a great speech in Germany while McCain visits Schmidt's Sausage Haus in German Village, Columbus, Ohio.

If you left McCain alone in a room with a computer, he wouldn't know how to turn it on, much less log on, double-click on a browser and find www.CBC.ca or any website, even his own.

The worst political website

If you need to die a little inside, go to www.johnmccain.com. It's the worst political website in existence. I kept checking to see if it was a parody. Clearly, no one on his campaign team has the wit to know that Jon Stewart took the piss out of the site a month ago.

The site retains the video tour of McCain's 45-foot-long campaign bus, or "crib" as he calls it, with close-ups of the engine, tires, luggage compartment and "seats," even though I am given to understand that these are not at all unusual in a "bus."

Here's where "folks" use their "laptops or BlackBerrys," the chino-wearing "director of advance" tells us. The home laptopper is clearly intended to think, "What's that you say? A travelling wagon with an engine that burns coal day and night, and cigar-smokers with fruit in their baskets and a place to stow the reticules? With an ole black driver? I be votin' fer this …" Oh stop, it's just sad.

Senator McCain, do you see now the precise way in which you and the modern world are no longer one? Scroll down, Bridget.

Watch here

The great San Francisco columnist Mark Morford, who you can "watch" here, has taught McCain his first web lesson, linking the student to the kind of intensive coverage only bloggers can give to all of McCain's latest self-inflicted humiliations.

But at what point does human pity kick in? I had none. I was fed up with the American media concealing McCain's horrific facial melanoma scars — the man may be dying for all we know — and I was fed up with how there is no level of family humiliation he will not accept.

But the website did me in.

There's a lot to dislike about the online world and a lot of tech stuff to learn while it is still in its horse-and-buggy phase. I have people, named Firesnacks, who come over when called. I don't use Twitter. I destroyed my Bell Mobility cellphone with an actual hammer several years ago.

We're all technically inadequate in some ways, and those who aren't are often socially inadequate. I know because when I meet computer geniuses in restaurants, this is my end of the conversation. "Eat your greens. I said, eat your greens. I mean it. If you put your glass on your fork and tap on the tines one more time, I'll ask the waiter to take away your pom juice."

That said, no computer geek, however confused in polite society, has the Republican nomination in his pocket. McCain, this tired, rage-filled old man, this Arizona version of the unlamented Bob Dole, does.

There's no law that says you have to deteriorate as you age. Many people actually improve; the young admire them and seek them out. But McCain is an embarrassment to the elderly and appears to be crumbling on his feet.

Gauging online stupidity

Being online is essential to modern life. You have to be online to be current. But it doesn't make you smart. Most of the time, it simply reveals you to be a person living a life of quiet desperation who can't spell.

After seeing Canadian education as it is reflected online (and I make allowances, God I make allowances, until I am out of loonies and toonies), I no longer worry about schools. If adults communicate at this level, then young people are clearly writing with sticks in the sand. It's all moot.

Thus McCain is secretly proud that he cannot cope online because he thinks it makes him one of the folks rather than one of the much-decried elite. What he doesn't realize is that the internet contains the masses, all the people who can't spell but none of the people who are impressed by a campaign bus.

McCain — in his wilful, or perhaps medical, idiocy — does not understand that he has the worst of both worlds.

McCain is failing on so many levels. Here are two:

He knows nothing about the great intellectual resources available online or the fantastic level of online stupidity that he needs to tap into to get a significant share of votes. He can't see himself.

His directors of advance don't grasp how he appears online but are too beef-witted to understand that the polite mainstream media don't serve him well either. They are too courteous to be accurate, to show him for what he is, a leftover.

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