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That's why we were mystified this week when Collins all of a sudden morphed into a wilting victim suffering from the mean and nasty campaign tactics of her brutish Democratic challenger in the 2008 Senate race, Rep. Tom Allen of Portland. It was awfully out of character.

Supporters of Allen in the Maine Democratic Party had arranged to employ one of the latest campaign maneuvers of the digital age, so-called "tracking." That's the polite word for what can easily be seen as hounding a candidate, video camera in hand, to record their every breath, utterance and, presumably, campaign-demolishing stumble that would otherwise have gone ignored. Those video snippets have been used by opposing candidates on YouTube and elsewhere on the Web -- most notoriously in the case of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who was caught employing a racial slur -- to hurt the candidate.

It's rough stuff and not terribly nice, but nothing out of the ordinary in the modern world of campaigns. It's really just a new version of the old nastiness that has been a hallmark of political races since Cain ran against Abel for the mantle of First and Most Favored Child.

And like it or not, the Maine Senate campaign of 2008 is a big one out in the rest of the country, where it's well-appreciated that the balance of power in the Senate may very well hinge on what happens right here in this state. While many of us in Maine may be inclined to more kindly forms of campaigning, we don't own this race.

That said, we hope that candidate Allen and his friends and colleagues in the Democratic Party and the legions of so-called independent groups that have sprung up to support his candidacy refrain from hanging out in the gutter.

While Allen can technically claim that he had nothing to do with the Collins tracking -- and that he, too, had been the object of a tracker very recently -- that's the kind of explanation that provides a distinction without a difference. And already, the campaign verbiage issuing over the last few months from Allen's friends has been decidedly ugly and personal in tone as it trashes Collins and her record.

There are serious and substantive differences between Collins and Allen.

There's a lot at stake in this race.

There's a lot of time before the election.

In the best of all possible worlds, those three facts would set the stage for a long and thoughtful public discussion by the candidates of the future of this state and country.

But we will almost certainly also get plenty of cheap shots, innuendo and unflattering portrayals of Allen and Collins produced by the most highly partisan segment of their backers. Some of those tactics could employ meaningless missteps and misstatements caught on video by one of these trackers. While that may be momentarily amusing, that's not the stuff we want to base our votes on and we'll lose a boatload of respect for any candidate who uses such tactics.

On the other hand, we're not particularly interested in hearing the candidates whine about each other's campaign maneuvers. Collins did herself no favor by allowing her campaign to portray her as hounded prey; she's running; she's tough; this is a crucially important race. She can ill afford to present herself as the victim -- especially before she's been made into one.

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