Obama camp dings McCain over BlackBerry claim

Barack Obama's campaign criticized a claim made by one of John McCain's advisers that the Arizona senator helped invent the BlackBerry. 

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement that McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin's suggestion is "preposterous." Holtz-Eakin told reporters on Tuesday that McCain's seat on the Senate Commerce Committee was responsible for the invention of one of the most-used devices in Washington.

{mosads}“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,” Burton said.

Holtz-Eakin, talking to reporters in Florida, reportedly held up his BlackBerry as an example of "a miracle that John McCain helped create."

Holtz-Eakin was explaining how McCain's position on the committee helped him understand financial markets, using his BlackBerry as visual evidence. McCain has talked about his computer illiteracy in previous interviews. The GOP presidential candidate has also said he doesn't use a BlackBerry, although his wife Cindy McCain is often spotted with one.

"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," Holtz-Eakin said, according to reports.

Democrats immediately seized on the comment, comparing it to the famous assertion in the 2000 presidential campaign that former Vice President Al Gore invented the Internet. Gore was widely mocked for the remark but he didn't actually make the claim. Instead he said he helped lay the framework for the Internet through policies he helped initiate, as pointed out by the Associated Press Tuesday.