But in making a decision about who will be the party's nominee it seems completely reasonable to me to take into account the fact that some candidates are going to be subjected to certain types of smears - not just that ALL candidates will be subjected to smears.  Smears are part of life in politics as you say.  But you should certainly evaluate the smear-effect on your candidate if you are able to; and we're able to do that with Clinton to a better degree than any other candidate.

With Clinton you have to take into account that there are going to be over-the-top smears and you have to take into account that she's got a long history of dealing with them and will presumably be tough in response. And you have to take into account that this will go on throughout her presidencey if she wins.  And you have to take into account that it's all happened before and factor in smear-fatigue.  You have to ask yourself do I want to go through THAT again. You have to ask what she brings to the table to balance out any special negatives you perceive that she has with respect to smears because of the history she has.

You don't have that with Edwards or Obama - we haven't gone through it with either of them before.  And, if I may expand your point, no one should be deluded into thinking that there isn't a smear factor for each of them just because it's easier to see with Clinton.

And how does each candidate balance out his or her smear factor - BooMan is saying, I think, with the trust factor.   A factor that's hard to weigh.  

That's where Clinton has a problem. I take your point that all politicians are untrustworthy if we base our trust on their discussion of the issues during a campaign.  But Clinton had a pre-existing problem on the trust issue that didn't come out of the campaign and her responses and that's the perception that she and Bill triangulate on everything.  Fair?  I don't know, but it's there, it's an issue.  It isn't going to go away.  She hasn't figured out a way yet to make it go away.  Maybe she can't.

BooMan isn't saying anything that Obama didn't say in coded speech in Iowa when he said that we didn't need triangulation.   Obama's whole campaign is a "trust me" campaign.  Now he's in the "trust me, don't trust her" phase of the campaign.  It might work.  On the other hand we've never seen Obama up against a smear campaign and he doesn't have a lot of history to back up his "trust me" factor.