POLITICAL TRIVIAL -- the smiling kind.

One of Washington's most feared columnists and top journalists, Dana Milbank, has written a new book on the government called Homo Politicus. In it he recounts President Bush’s October 2006 visit to the city of La Plume in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Bush was there to campaign for Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) during the week Bush proclaimed, “National Character Counts Week.”

"I'm pleased to be here with Don Sherwood," said a smiling president pictured in the S. John Wilkin Associated Press picture above. Bush told the congressman's loyal but dispirited supporters at a luncheon fundraiser, "He has got a record of accomplishment."

Why were the supporters dispirited? President Bush failed to mention that Rep. Sherwood had acknowledged having an "extramarital affair,” or that he had "repeatedly chok[ed]" and "attempt[ed] to strangle" Cynthia Ore, his former mistress, 35 years his junior.

In court Sherwood admitted to the five-year extramarital affair and settled a 5.5 million dollar lawsuit in which he did, indeed, admit to choking her. He denied he abused her and aired a campaign commercial asking his constituents to forgive his infidelity!

I wonder, just wonder, what just what is Mr. Bush's defination of: "character"?