Do you swear to uphold the constitution and ask, "Dude...you gonna eat that?"

As a nation, we've been voting for president for about 220 years now, and yet there still seems to be a lot of confusion as to just what we're voting for. An email going around is delivering the shocking news that John Kerry is kind of an inconsiderate jerk.

Ladies and gentlemen, I just don't care. I've said this many times since the '96 election: I'm not voting for the nicest guy. I don't cast my vote for who I would most want to sit down to a nice dinner with. I vote based on politics. Bob Dole seems like an extremely nice person, but he's an extremely nice guy who is anti-choice, anti-gun control, and in favor of tax cuts for the rich, among other things. Same goes with Bush. Why should I care if these guys are really good fathers and devoted husbands if they're not legislating the way I want them to legislate? Why should I care if Clinton and Kerry are jerks as long as they vote the way I want them to vote? W's purportedly easy, laid-back, caring attitude doesn't affect me in my everyday life, but his apparent disdain for the first amendment does.

Is this so hard to understand? On the surface, it seems to be, as we watch nervous conservatives get shocked over the private-life personality of a guy they weren't going to vote for anyway. But deeper down, we know what it is: just another conservative attempt to get moderates to forget about politics (which they seem to do pretty easily) and vote based only on personality.

But the story of the Pilot & the Pizza is the most ridiculous yet. As Barbara Mikkelson points out on that page on Snopes, it could just be a matter of John Kerry being kind of dense and not seeing how his actions affect other people, not that he considers himself above others. But even if he does consider himself above others, I'm still voting solely on politics, even if an old college roommate comes forward with a horrifying story of how John Kerry once finished off the milk even though his roommate's name was clearly written on it.