In the recent letter, "Not Governed Much," a writer criticized Sen. Obama for having campaigned for higher office in "59 of the last 112 months" and also for having "missed almost half of the votes in the U.S. Senate since January 2007." While I am not able to assess the first of these criticisms, I am in complete agreement with the underlying concern that modern political campaigns last too long and require that candidates spend too much time away from what they do for a living.

However, the link that the writer provided to GovTrack.US allowed me to obtain comparable voting statistics for Sen. McCain. If votes are a true indicator, then McCain has been campaigning more than Obama inasmuch as McCain did not vote in 64 percent of the 655 roll call votes held since Jan. 1, 2007; Obama did not vote in 46 percent of those same roll call votes.

Dating back to January 2005 when Obama joined the Senate, McCain did not vote in 37 percent of the 1,299 roll call votes held since then while Obama did not vote in 24 percent of those same roll call votes.

During both the recent two-year period, when the campaigning for president has been at its highest level, and the common four-year tenures of McCain and Obama, it seems as though Obama has paid more attention to the peoples' business than has McCain. A related implication of these voting statistics may be that we voters have even less of a sense of how McCain would govern than of how Obama would govern.

John Libbey,

Lewisburg