Profile: Your Friendly Neighborhood Political Operative

It's the season.  No, not that one.  The political season.  Maybe we don't know it but most years, September through early November is heavy with political and election events.  Every four years, we have the Super Bowl of political elections, Race for the White House.

Things have changed a lot in how elections are conducted and largely, technology has had a helping hand.  How of often these days do you watch reporters updating us in the middle of their broadcast by reading off their Blackberries?

So, what do you need if you want to be a political operative?

For the average mobile warrior, you have a lot of choices with respects to mobile devices.  Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Blackberry.  For political operative his real choice is obvious.  It's a Blackberry.  Which one though?  Well, the Bold nor the Storm is available in the US yet.  And even if they were, it's not an option.  They might be good six months from the date they are made available but not before.  So our generic political operative will use the Curve or the 8820.  It's robust and proven.  On the other than hand, we have seen Carl Rove with his iPhone in the past.

Now, he's going to be traveling a lot.  Sometimes by him- or herself.  I think operative will go with the Knight Rider GPS.  And it works.  Not only does it work, it's voiced by William Daniels, KITT himself!  Here's a review if you want to seriously consider it.  Bottomline, it works.  But if our guy isn't into themed GPS units, I think he'll go with Garmin's Nuvi 880 .  Here is CNet's review.  It's a bit on the pricy side but bottomline is it works and accurate.

Obviously, our guy will want to be using the Macbook Air for his mobile computing but since no Apple laptop has a built-in 3G modem, that might be a stumbling block for our PO.  However, the image of it all, he might.  But he'll also consider a netbook with a built-in 3G modem.  Connectivity is more of a big help than bigger screen.  He's is not going to need to be looking at spreadsheets with poll numbers and crunching out scenarios.  It's a game for political operatives everywhere on every issue.  They know everything by heart.

Again, it's about mobile Internet access.  We're seeing some netbooks with 3G subscription across the pond but not here yet.  I think we'll see 2009 with more explosive growth in Mobile internet in no small thanks to netbooks equiped with 3G modems.

Now how is he going to carry all that in a briefcase, right?  Are you kidding?  That's so Washington culture!  No.  No briefcases.  PC Magazine has a few with different styles to satisfy our PO.  Our political operative will be traveling in and out of airports on a daily basis as we wind down to the 9th inning of the election.  He'll be lucky if he even checks into a hotel.  So, he's gonna need airport security friendly bags.  I like the Mobile Edge ScanFast and the CODi Phantom.

Oh, and he'll be carrying a Moleskine netbook.  Why?  Because a lot of writing and notetaking are still being done on papers.  Not only that, our mean seasoned PO will be looking to write a memoir or two one day.  Maybe even run for political office.  Move high enough, his notebooks and letters could be sitting in a Presidential library one day.

Also, read about last week's mobile warrior profile:

• Mobile Warrior Profile: Josh Gates of Destination Truth
• Mobile Warrior Profile: The X-Files:  Mulder and Scully