We can pontificate endlessly about whether such charges are right or wrong, partisan or impartial, significant or insignificant. They all ask the wrong questions, no matter what the answers.

And, ultimately (with a few rare exceptions), the answers boil down to "The Candidate (choose your own name) is human and imperfect in the face of a world of ambiguous moral choices." Who isn't?

I think personally that about 80% of what any President does he does by rote and any well-stuffed blue suit would do. Neither candidate is going to disband the Department of Homeland Security, declare the Iraq war over and leave, or stop the CIA from spying on anybody under current circumstances. They are choices already made which no one is going to unmake and any President will simply have to manage. Do you disagree?

It is the other 20% that is truly important. Therein lie the right questions: What has George W. Bush actually done? What does John Kerry propose to do? How much do I support or approve of either?

I note that only one campaign, and its supporters, seems to be interested in trying to answer those questions as of yet. To quote Thomas Pynchon, "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Actually, Cheney never served in the Senate unless one counts his stint as its president for the last four years. He was in the House a number of years, sandwiched in between tours of duty in the Ford White House and working for the two Presidents Bush as SECDEF and Veep. And, again, he's been Veep for four years and is running for another four years as Veep. It's not like he's a mystery candidate.

As for Cheney, I'm not real familiar with his Senate record either; I just recall much Conventional Wisdom from the primaries about how it's harder for a Senator to run for Pres than a Governor, since Senators have so many issue votes in their past that can be twisted by the opposition. While I believe this, it seems odd that we haven't seen more attacks on Kerry for that. I know he was hammered earlier this year for some of his votes, but I also recall seeing a few of Cheney's old floor speeches trotted out by the Dems, and I haven't heard much since then, so I assume there's been some sort of mutual cease-fire called...

Keep blogging it James, give us every gory detail, blow by blow, as you have in the past few days. Don't let any inclination to even consider that John Kerry might have served honorably restrain you.

This is one we really need to wallow in to find out who and what we really are as a people and a nation.

I'm not sure what it is about Cheney that we'd look into. My point about Kerry's war protest and Senate career isn't that there is some scandal to be unearthed, merely that his record as a public citizen does not comport with the image he's trying to stake out for this election. Cheney's political conservatism has been rather consistent for three decades.

I think this also applies to your last point, James - the more the GOP digs into Kerry's Senate records and past positions & votes, the more the Dems will dig into Cheney's history. I think there's a certain parallel with 'detente' here...