The vice president, in his attempts to make Senator Edwards seem like a lightweight, not only claimed never to have seen him on the Senate floor but also claimed Edwards constituents felt he was shirking his duties. Facts are troublesome things.
The Pilot Newspaper – Opinion Page:
“His hometown newspaper has taken to calling him ‘Senator Gone,'” Vice President Richard Cheney said of his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Edwards.
Well, not exactly.
The Pilot hasn’t ‘taken to calling him’ anything. In fact, the vice president’s obscure reference sent us scrambling to our library. And sure enough, we did publish an editorial 15 months ago, on June 25, 2003, headlined, ‘Edwards Should Do His Day Job.’ In it, we noted that Sen. Jesse Helms used to be called ‘Senator No.’ And we added: ‘Four and a half years into his first term, John Edwards is becoming known as Senator Gone.’
The reference was to Edwards’ frequent absences from the Senate floor as he traveled here and there (mostly there) pursuing his presidential ambitions.
But we also wrote: “Members of the senator’s staff point out that Edwards’ attendance record this year has been better than the three other Democratic senators who are campaigning for president — Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and Bob Graham. And the aides also say none of the votes Edwards missed was close, so his presence on the floor would not have changed the outcome.”
I was thinking of this last night when Cheney tossed the barb that neither Kerry nor Edwards were on the floor when some votes were taken: none of them were close votes, ie, there was real no point in being there, other than to be on the record. If the greater good is served by campaigning to turf the incumbents out of office, they did the right thing by campaigning.
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And as it turns out, Cheney himself punched his card only 2 of 127 times. Hillary Clinton racked up more appearances in the chair than Cheney . . .