Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, offered the cutting assessment in his online analysis "Crystal Ball."

Even though John Kerry hasn't received the usual bounce after naming his running mate, Sabato writes in his latest newsletter, the Democrat campaign "has put George W. Bush in a box with the selection of John Edwards. And there is probably no way for Bush to win this part of the presidential battle."

"To put it bluntly, Cheney has blown it," the straight-shooting Sabato wrote.

He continued: "One would have expected a classic Washington establishment insider to know how to keep his reputation intact through innumerable controversies – calling the 'right' people here, consulting the 'wise' men and women of D.C. there, taking the puffed-up press poobahs of the Capital City to lunch at the White House here and there.

"Anybody recall how Henry Kissinger came out of the Nixon sleaze and the Vietnam disaster smelling like a bouquet of yellow roses – at least with the bunch that counts in D.C. and New York – despite the fact that he was in both situations up to his eyeballs?

"Instead of being Kissinger, Cheney has been Nixon in the Bush term. He has hunkered down in the White House and 'undisclosed locations.' He's been uncommunicative with the broader public and unconcerned about his image until it's too late. He's often appeared to be the sinister puppeteer, pulling Bush's strings on critical matters like Iraq.

"He's more associated with the Halliburton scandal than anything else in the public mind. And most importantly from a political standpoint, Dick Cheney is now seen as a rigid ideologue, unconcerned about facts that do not fit into his preconceived notions of the world, too closely tied to the far right and too unacceptable to the voters as a whole to be what he once was: workable standby equipment, a potential president who could take office with popular support.

"In short, Cheney has failed his president and become a significant liability."

Despite all of Edwards' flaws – his "single term of office in the Senate has been remarkably undistinguished, noted mainly for his overweening ambition" and he has "a left-wing voting record and a shockingly low attendance record on roll call votes that would make any serious senator blush with embarrassment" – this extremist but telegenic lightweight looks good in comparison with Cheney, Sabato says.

He notes something NewsMax has already pointed out: the media establishment's enormous hypocrisy in gushing over Edwards even though it attacked the far more experienced nominee Dan Quayle as being too green for the office.

"Be that as it may, there is a deeper story here: The thin resume of Edwards looks so much better because the thick resume of Cheney now looks so bad."

He concludes that Bush is stuck.

"The streets of Washington's political district are filled with rumors and scenarios where Cheney disappears from the GOP ticket. Yet if Bush drops Cheney, the party conservatives – ever sensitive to a slight – will wail and gnash their teeth, threaten to go fishing on Election Day, and ruin any bounce Bush might get from a substitute veep.

"If Cheney wants Bush to win, he might want to help the process along by stepping aside. Have you stopped laughing yet? We all know that Cheney still labors under the illusion that he is a plus for Bush, and if doubts ever occur to him, the addiction of the power and the glory of high office acts quickly to banish the thought."

Editor's note: