Did John McCain Invent The BlackBerry?

Move over, Al Gore. Inventing the Internet is yesterday's news -- John McCain created the smart phone, according to one of the Repbulican presidential candidate's top advisers:

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."

It's a good thing Holtz-Eakin doesn't have an iPhone. We're guessing Apple CEO Steve Jobs wouldn't have taken the McCain adviser's thunder-stealing as quietly as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has so far.

And we should probably keep in mind that McCain himself didn't claim credit for personally achieving such a high-tech breakthrough. But then neither did Al Gore.