Superman. Batman. Barack Obama. Our nation's 44th president is a geek, says Matthew Yglesias, because he is a huge comic book nerd. Of course, when Yglesias says "geek" he means it as a compliment, because obviously Obama is just like James Bond or something, so the fact that he reads Spiderman comics doesn't make him a loser, it's just one more of his awesome quirks, like listening to Lil' Wayne or being black.

So I thought, what are

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For all the comparison's he would like to make about himself and Harry Truman (who left the White House with a high disapproval rating but history later proved him to be jawesome), George Bush has managed to outshine his predecessors in at least one respect: he's beaten every other president in history with how much he's hated.

No other President's disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent," said CNN pollster Keating Holland. "Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year." Including his current highest-ever rating of 76%.

Harry Truman left with a 67% rating, and Nixon, post-Watergate, only had a 66%.

The analogy between this election and the one in 1960 when John F. Kennedy defeated Nixon because he was more attractive, is an easy one. Both represent times when changing mediums (radio to television, and now television to web) allowed for greater access to the candidates, greater scrutiny, and was really the winner's game for who could best lasso the convergence of the media to best suit their campaign.

But let's not get too cocky here: it's not a perfect example. Kennedy didn't win the election because he carefully planned and executed a look that came across as more honest and sincere to the voters of America. He just happened to sweat less than Nixon during the debates.

Meanwhile Barack Obama and John McCain have been doing everything in their power to grab the largest chunk of technology users as possible: text the vote, YouTube ad campaign clips, and the use of online video services to play (and replay, and replay) everything from Katie Couric's botched interview with Sarah Palin to Joe the Plumber ranting at Barack Obama, to Jeremiah Wright's infamous "Goddamn America!" speech. So lets not pretend technological adaptability was an accident that the younger candidate somehow fell into. Both campaigns, despite McCain's insistence that he doesn't use the Internet, have found ways to increase their advantage in the more highly interactive medium.

And of course, this comes with an inevitable downside:

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So if you watched last season of Mad Men (and you did), there was that whole subplot of Nixon vs. Kennedy in 1960, and how to market a candidate (Nixon) that was less media-aware than his opponent. The presidential debates coincided neatly with the rise in personal televisions and mass media, meaning for the first time Americans could watch the great debates unfold from home, which some speculate is the reason Kennedy won. Kennedy was way hotter than Nixon.

Similarly, today the race to the White House is being fought on different technological battleground than it's been in previous years. And like JFK, Barack Obama knows how to play the new mediums to his advantage. The MSM may not always like it, but Obama's camp is changing the face of electoral process in a way that Marshall McLuhan would have been proud of. Here's how:

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