  Schwinger used an analytic continuation of the effective action to correctly
compute the particle production rate per unit volume for QED in a uniform
electric field. However, if one simply evaluates the one loop expectation value
of the current operator using his propagator, the result is zero! We analyze
this curious fact from the context of a canonical formalism of operators and
states. The explanation turns out to be that Schwinger's propagator is not
actually the expectation value of the time-ordered product of field operators
in the presence of a time-independent state, although it is of course a Green's
function. We compute the true propagator in the presence of a state which is
empty at $x_+ = 0$ where $x_+ \equiv (x^0+x^3)/\sqrt{2}$ is the lightcone
evolution parameter. Our result can be generalized to electric fields which
depend arbitrarily on $x_+$.
