On Voting Records

Boltgirl Hopeless Cynicism Watch, Day Three. Status: hopeless, wondering where the bourbon is.

You do remember the bit about Obama's "present" votes from Rudy Giuliani's laugh-fest of a keynote address at the RNC, right? Here's some food for thought. At least Obama managed to show up for work in the Illinois legislature, and even managed to show up in the Senate while simultaneously running for president. John McCain couldn't even manage a "present" vote the majority of times Congress was in session this time around, as he missed more than 60 percent of them. That's a worse attendance record than Obama, Clinton, and that guy who had a stroke. Follow the link to OpenLeft so you can see the list of bills that died at the hands of the Republican minority, when a single vote from Mr. Maverick Reach-Across-the-Aisle McCain could have saved them. Little things like energy independence, gender equity in pay, and Medicare weren't important enough to compel McCain to show up for work, despite continuing to draw his salary and claim to be representing the people of Arizona (oh, and I suppose the people of the entire country and both parties, per his remarks at the convention) while jetting around on Beer One to hold town hall meetings.

In fairness, almost four out of every ten votes did see Walnuts participating. He came into the office a few times to vote for things like denying habeus corpus to detainees and denying active-duty troops a minimum amount of time between deployments, so maybe we should be glad he was such a duty-derelicting piece of work this year.

So, to review, John McCain can't be bothered to do his job, even when it provides ideal opportunities to act on his promises regarding bipartisanship and the best interests of Americans when it comes to energy, their wallets, and their military sons and daughters being treated right. Barack Obama managed to go to work and even managed to do actual bipartisan stuff, assuming Richard Lugar didn't switch his affiliation when nobody was looking. Too bad truth fails to resonate when it requires more than a one-word label or three-word-chant to explain.