I wrote this poll question for AOL early on Friday, after news of Barack Obama’s pledge to get personal in the election first got reported on MS-NBC and in the New York Times. Shortly afterwards, his new hard-hitting ad got released that argued that national security hinged critically not on a President’s military background or obvious expertise in military and foreign affairs, but on his ability to send an e-mail. By the time AOL had an opportunity to post the question, though, we found out that Obama can send an e-mail, but apparently can’t conduct a rudimentary Google or Lexis-Nexis search.

Does going personal help Obama anyway? In the linked post for this question, I argue that the more he gets pushed away from his New Politics preaching, the more Obama diminishes himself — and removes what was thought to be special about his candidacy. At one point, he said that a fresh approach to politics trumped experience, but I think Obama is learning a new lesson the last couple of weeks.