VP coverage

Vice President race...what Vice President race? I thought Cheney and Edwards were just going to sit back and let Kerry and Bush do all the mudslinging and fly low beneath the radar. In all honesty, I wish there was more coverage of the race to be the next Vice President. Perhaps I'm too politically uninformed (and that very well may be the case), but the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name "John Edwards" isn't something he's said, or some amazing platform that makes me think of him as a great VP candidate. No, instead I can't help but think about how close his name is to that John Edward guy who not only sees but talks to dead people.

But in seriousness, it's hard for me, at this point, to adequately separate the two Vice President candidates from their running mates. For instance, a recent Los Angeles Times article included a series of things that Bush, Kerry, Cheney, and Edwards said about their opposition or current events, and placed their quotes into context. But after reading their words, I was unable to distinguish how their words were separate from their running mate's. They seemed like an extension of the other's mouth.

One thing became clear as I did preliminary scans of some of the country's major print and online news sources: most weren't going to give you that magic easy link right to the Vice Presidential contest. You usually had to go looking for it. Even in a Washington-based paper like The Washington Post.

I found The Orange County Register's coverage of Cheney and Edwards (The Edwards, Cheney Stump) nice because it gave me a feel that yes they are campaigning independently of their running mates. Few articles were centered on Cheney and Edwards, and one headline that read: "Edwards Calls GOP Party of Fear" first introduced him as "Kerry's running mate."

The San Francisco Chronicle presented quotes from both candidates on a number of stories, but the most recent story I could find that centered around one of the VP candidates was about Edwards asking Bush to renounce Cheney's comment about how America would suffer another terrorist attack if Kerry won the election.

The Fox News website, not surprisingly, usually started it's "he said" articles with Cheney. In fact, Edwards only received a few lines at the bottom of the article.
In general, most coverage of the VPs left me wanting to know more.