McCain's Top Policy Man: McCain Qualified for Presidency Because He "Helped Create" BlackBerrys

This, I suspect, will be as big a headache for the McCainers as the "How many houses do I own?" episode. I mean, we're still joking about Al Gore inventing the internet eight years later, right?

Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."

Update: For what it's worth, BlackBerry is made by a Canadian company.

Update Update: The AP gets sassy in its write-up, saying, "McCain has acknowledged that he doesn't know how to use a computer and can't send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry's prime functions."

Too Many Updates!!: The Obama campaign keeps its eye on the ball in its response:

"If John McCain hadn't said that 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' on the day of one of our nation's worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.