The stress and time commitment required of a presidential campaign can take its toll on the ambitious legislator, often resulting in a drastic drop-off in his/her "day job" attendance.  As shown in tables at the end of this article, elected officials campaigning for President missed a drastic number of votes in both the Senate and House.

Let's be clear about one thing; this group is campaigning on company time.  They are all getting paid upwards of $165,000 a year from tax dollars and ignoring their jobs while they seek the Oval Office.  Were the rest of us non-elected government folk to do this, we'd be canned.  OK, we'd be in the employee relations office for a while first.  Then we'd be canned.  But our private sector counterparts would be done after missing only a few days, let alone an entire year!

In the Senate, presidential candidates Joseph Biden (D-DE), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) have missed a combined 51% of the 174 votes cast between July 9, 2007 and November 16, 2007 (representing 90 workdays).  Senator Obama proved the worst of the no-shows, missing two-thirds of the Senate votes during this period. Shouldn't there a probationary period in Congress newbies like Obama?   

In comparison, our non-campaigning "control" senator, Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS), missed 13% of the votes cast during the same period.  Not bad, but 13% of a normal job is a pretty big share.  Missing 13% of days at work equates to 12 days over a 90 day period.

In the House, hopefuls Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Ron Paul (R-TX) and Tom Tancredo (R-CO) fared better than their senatorial counterparts, missing a combined 32% of the 516 votes cast between July 11 and November 15.  Rep. Tancredo led the pack in voting-truancy, missing 44% of the votes - quite a lot for someone with no chance of being elected President.

In contract, the "control" representative, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), was a model of House attendance, missing a mere 8 votes of the 516 cast.  You get the gold star Steny; with that first name, you'll need it.