Something doesn't add up this election year

Either Hillary Rodham flunked math class at Maine South High School in Park Ridge or she picked up Jethro-style ciphering during her years in Arkansas.

How else would you explain Sen. Rodham-Clinton's repeated statement that she has decades of experience? Unless she is figuring her Senate time in dog years, I'm not sure how she arrives at "35 years of experience."

Of course Sen. Clinton, a Democrat from New York, is not alone in her bamboozling arithmetic. There is something that doesn't add up for several of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. It's called attendance.

Consider Sen. Barack Obama banking that the sum of his political experience will satisfy New Hampshire voters on Tuesday just as it did last week in Iowa.

But Sen. Obama has done little to enhance his short political resume the past six months or to adequately represent the interests of Illinoisans who elected him to his first national post.

Since the Fourth of July, Obama has missed almost 70 percent of the votes taken by the U.S. Senate. From September onward his attendance is even worse. Campaigning for president since Labor Day, Obama has missed about 80 percent of all Senate votes including the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General.

Obama's spokesman contends that most of the important Senate votes came in the first half of the year and that the senator was there for them.

Sen. Clinton also missed the Mukasey vote, even though both she and Obama had been critical of his nomination. Clinton has been absent for about the same number of votes as Obama since midsummer, shortchanging her constituents in New York just as Illinoisans have been under-represented.

For comparison, Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois' other Democratic senator, has a much better attendance record. Durbin makes 99 percent of floor votes. But then again he's not running for president.

Even toe-tapping Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, managed to make 92 percent of all Senate votes this session, despite his arrest for solicitation in a Minneapolis men's room.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona is a little bit better than Clinton and Obama when it comes to attendance. McCain has made a little more than half of all votes on the floor of the Senate this session.

Even though national political experience is an issue with the other leading candidates, they really don't have full-time jobs to scrutinize. John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson aren't current office-holders.

The best Congressional voting record for any presidential candidate this year is held by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat. Rep. Kucinich has made almost nine out of 10 votes in the House of Representatives.

Candidate Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, also manages his elective responsibilities and his campaigning pretty well. Rep. Paul has voted on almost 75 percent of the legislation that has come before the House this term.

For the presidential candidates this isn't an issue of partisanship, gender, race, religion or finances.

It is a matter of doing what is right and putting your current job, the one you were elected to do, ahead of the job you want.

In Obama's case, cramming as much real-life national legislative experience into a short period of time seems more crucial than it does for John McCain, who has been on the scene for many years.

But for any candidate who has a current job representing the people, there is a message in the math, in those numbers that tell us whether you have spent more time campaigning for votes or casting votes.

Each of you is trying to come up with a clever way to position yourself as the candidate of "change."

Here's a thought: If you want to represent us in the future, try a little harder to fulfill your promise to represent us now.

That would be quite a change.