Don't Go There, W

Well, it took all of 20 minutes for GOP attack dogs to attack John Edwards as an "ambulance chaser," "political lightweight," and "radical liberal." Now the Preznit has joined the fray.

During a question and answer session with reporters, the president was asked to compare Senator Edwards' credentials to those of his own vice president, Dick Cheney. His response was brief.

"Dick Cheney can be president," he said.

Oh boy. Do you really want to start this debate, George? Let's see:

On the one hand you have a man who didn't have a rich father, who went to state schools, who became a lawyer through hard work, who was actually GOOD at his job, who represented regular people against scornful corporations and made them pay, including defending a 5 year-old girl who was sucked into a valve in a wading pool that the manufacturers knew was faulty (read more about that one and others here and here), and who was elected to the Senate and served 5 years in Washington, on the Senate Intelligence Committee among other places.

On the other hand, you have a C student whose rich father helped him get into college and get into the oil business, and also helped him get out of the oil business when he fucked it up, who wasn't good at all at his job, who bounced around to a bunch of different jobs when he wasn't sneaking out of his Air National Guard duties (which his father also got him into), who used his father's connections to acquire a campaign staff in Texas, who had NO experience in Washington when he was (s)elected President, and who has shown his foreign policy and Capitol Hill inexperience to be a catastrophe by lying his way into an invasion of Iraq, turning the postwar situation into a colossal failure, by losing 1.5 million American jobs (the worst job loss in history since Herbert Hoover), cutting taxes for the super-wealthy, and generally making us hated around the world.

Do you REALLY want to make that argument?

Side Note: In the first of what may become growing GOP voices, former Senator Alphonse D'Amato has suggested that Bush dump Cheney from the ticket. Also, Enron exec and Bush-Cheney pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay has been indicted on charges stemming from the company's collapse in 2001. I'm guessing he's the first of many Bush hangers-on to get this treatment.