The NY Times is suggesting Obama won't be able to use his blackberry once he becomes president due to the nature of the Presidential Records Act and security concerns. However, with a few modifications to his blackberry and a simple adjustment to the IT infrastructure, I believe he could theoretically continue to use his blackberry in a limited capacity while he is president. It would require implementing a proper cryptographic infrastructure between the president and the limited number people who have permission to email him on that account. As well, he may need to ensure that he cannot respond directly with the blackberry as a preventative measure. However, this second part may be unnecessary if the president is mature enough to not abuse the privileges granted him by the email account. (IE. He realizes that anything he sends on the BB can be subpeonaed.)

When I grew up, my father owned a computer consulting firm. On each of his business cards was his firm's slogan. In that slogan is an idea that many people, especially in today's age of high speed internet and rapid response blogging, fail to understand. It's a simple idea.

There is time to do it right.

It's a slogan that reasonably explained my father's idea about his work. He believed that it is better to spend more time on a project and get it right than try to push something non-functional, bug-ridden, etc. onto a customer. It has had the effect of maintaining an incredibly dedicated customer base to his company.

Note that this slogan does not imply there is an infinity of time to get the job done. It implies that you can rush and put in a patch job that makes a bigger mess of things in the long run, or you can work solidly and get the job done right the first time. You can overreact to an issue and hack something together that deals with it in the short term, or you can lay out a plan of action and follow through on it and have a fix that lasts longterm.

So what does this have to do with political strategy?

Jed Report put up a video that perfectly enunciates the sheer absurdity in the press's portrayal of McCain as a Straight-Talker and audacity of McCain's statement that he isn't like Bush at all.

Straight-Talking Express? I say Straight-Talking BS.

A few years ago when I was just starting to learn about the netroots in the United States and their various successes, I overheard someone explain the methodology that eventually will lead to the shift towards what the progressives in this country desire. It was this simple idea,

"Vote the one you want in the primary, vote for the Democrat in the election"

Now, in other countries like Canada, this isn't that easy. Mostly because there are multiple viable progressive parties and voting for a single one would actually decrease the efficacy of the progressive movement (Even though some Liberals in Canada would argue otherwise.) This is why Canadians have strategic voting and entire websites dedicated to which party to vote for where based on the probability of that parties candidate of beating the more Conservative candidates.

While the two-party system in the states is an irritant, it does allow for a very simple and easy way to slowly pull a system in a direction if a large enough group of people decided to do it. By having that group vote en masse for a specific party, and then forcing said candidates of that party to be more attuned to their belief system, naturally the politics will shift in the direction they want. It won't be as rapid as a revolution, but there will be a mathematical critical point where everything changes. (And it seems that this year is that critical point.)

By repeating the mantra, "Vote for the candidate I want in the primary, vote for the Democrat in the election." Progressives can fight over their own issues and still slowly move in the direction that all progressives want to eventually move.