Wheel Column: Are We There Yet? (8/27)

While you were slaving away at that internship or summer job during the past few months, twenty of our country'€™s most prolific€” -- and in some cases not so prolific --€” politicians have hit the trail: answering questions, attending debates and trading insults in an attempt to win the hearts and votes of the American people.

Yes, the race to succeed President Bush is already bustling even though we still have five months to go before the first primary and fourteen before the general election. This election season started a year and a half before November 2008! Do we have to put up with this nonsense for that long?

For lovers of politics like myself, an elongated primary campaign may seem like a windfall. After all, it'€™s gives the voters a better chance to examine the candidates and the candidates more time to win our votes. But these primaries are ridiculous. The length of this campaign season is actually hurting voters.

Some candidates are a joke; even more have no chance of winning, yet they continue to waste our time in the debates and on television news shows day after day, week after week. Voters are tuning out of the national conversation. It'€™d probably be better, both for the candidates and the voters, if they all just went away until after Thanksgiving.

One of the reasons this presidential cycle started so early is because it’s the first race since 1928 in which neither an incumbent president or vice president has declared for the race. Dick Cheney long ago announced that he has no plans to seek higher office, so both parties are kicking off this election season with a full primary, with no candidate having with the political head start incumbency provides.

But since we are so far from the election, most Americans don’t care about the massive fields of candidates on both sides of the aisle who are jockeying to become their party’s nominee. Who cares what former Alaska Democratic Senator Mike "€œthe rest of the Democratic field scares me"€ Gravel (who took a train to a South Carolina debate since his campaign couldn’t afford a plane ticket) and Republican Representative Ron "I'€™m popular on the internet, but not in polls"€ Paul have to say about what they hope to accomplish as president.

Each party has held a multitude of debates and forums for its candidates, most of which have featured little talk about actual plans and policies and rather a lot of sweeping generalizations. We’ve had a YouTube debate, the sole highlight of which was a question on global warming from a talking snowman, and a giant AFL-CIO “forum” held on a football field, where Democratic candidates told the union members exactly what they wanted to hear, without any explanation on how these statements would actually be implemented.

How is it possible to have a debate with nine people? They give the platform to the Paul'€™s, Gravel'€™s, Tancredo'™s, and Kucinich'€™s, who use it to spew impractical and unrealistic ideas that they will never have to live up to because they aren’t going to get elected. They also make picking a winner a lot more difficult since they deny the front-runners the opportunity to actually debate.

Ready or not, the race to replace George W. Bush is in full swing. Hopefully its length won'€™t tire the American people out before the end.