Election 2008: Well, the book should be interesting.

Another day, another crucial step in the battle for the US Presidency. Now I've got a real, almost anal, interest in US Politics (a brief look at my bookshelf shows this beyond reasonable doubt) but I'm struggling with this Presidential election - and we are still in the primary season.

Sure, stuff is happening, and each new primary looks to be more decisive than the last. The problem is that stuff is happening really, really slowly. And that decisive blow is not being unleashed by either the Democrat or Republican candidates. This does not feel like a race for the White House. It feels more like an arduous route march to the White House, with regular breaks for the candidates to talk shite and snipe at each other. As one of my colleagues remarked today - history is being made over in the US. But it would be great if they could hurry the fuck up.

I understand the ins and outs of the US election process - I respect why it is so elongated, even if I don't think it is a good system. But this election seems to be just too long. Go Obama! Go McCain! Go Clinton! Go Paul! Hell, even Go Huckabee! Fuck, I'm tempted to support anyone who can deliver a knockout punch in their respective primaries and start the proper General Election campaign. Just to move things forward. People who complain about length of the 6 week general election campaigns in this country should be forced to watch every single contest in the US Presidential Election cycle until their brains leak from their ears, mushed to a fine pate by rampaging boredom.

The hacks over in the US must be feeling a far worse sense of fatigue. Can you imagine being on Hillary Clinton's plane right now? Barely aware of what state you are on, what you are meant to be doing here, and why this woman keeps on shrieking nonsense at you? Or on Obama's plane, suffocating in the air of paranoid smugness that oozes from every pore Obama has? How about on McCain's plane, where you must be practically brain dead from all the stories about heroism and earnest, centrist decision making? Or - hell upon hell - on Huckabee's plane, where the candidate is probably flying so high towards the heavens in the vain hope that he can fellate God? And knowing that if you object, he's a-gonna burn you. Regardless of the impact in the integrity of the aircraft. Whatever plane you were on, you must be feeling utterly battered and weary.

In fact, most journalists will probably be sticking to the campaign in the hope that they can write a book about it when it is all over. The problem is that the end - in distant November - is not so much out of sight, but rather invisible. An efficient journalist - or at least one concerned for their own mental health - would be better placed to go into hibernation for the next few months, resurfacing just before America actually votes. You could catch up with everything (basically candidates bitching at each other) via news archives and various video diaries, before sitting up for the whole of election night, starting your book in the morning.

See, this Presidential Election campaign will make a great book. Hell, with everything condensed into a two hour run time, it has the potential to be an awesome film. But both the book and the film will work because they can excise some much of the inconclusive pissing around we are currently witnessing. The 2008 campaign in a two hour film - fast moving and breezy. In reality the 2008 campaign has been played out since 2004 - and is jaw-droppingly tedious.

Mr E reckons he will be staying in all night to watch the results come in. I say good luck to him. I'll be off to bed at around 10:30pm. I'll catch up with the results on my radio, in the shower in the morning, when I can get all the details in a two minute bulletin.