Thoughts about the presidential campaign:

   1) It starts too early. There is a enough crap on TV. Ban candidates from announcing candidacies before January 1 of the year of the election. There might be less of an emphasis on money for candidates. (Okay, maybe I am naive on that one.) Plus we would be spared a lot of drivel. With what would it be replaced? Different drivel, probably. As it goes now, though, by the time election day rolls around, many of us will have been thoroughly exhausted.

   2) New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina should not set the intellectual tenor of the country. If the process of primary elections is to continue, make all the primaries take place on one day. Iowa has its caucuses. They consist of small gatherings of people in the same room. As straw votes are taken, and a couple of candidates seem to break way, groups of their supporters move back and forth to harangue the undecideds. New Hampshire’s voters always seem off the wall. Their primary is disregarded quickly, anyway (Paul Tsongas won there as did Pat Buchanan; and you did not see their names on the ballots the following November). And South Carolina? Even during the Constitutional Convention, its delegates were not viewed all that well by others of the Framers. South Carolina is generally thought to be where first shots of the Civil War were fought. The Confederate battle flag flew above the state’s capitol building until 2000. It still flies on a monument on the Capitol’s grounds.

   3) The primaries of all the states—if we are to provide tax dollars for the two parties (really, one; the two share probably 80 percent or more of the same money people )—should be on the same day. At least scheduling should be such as to not render later primaries meaningless. Face it, by the time Indiana’s primary rolls around, both parties know who will be their man. (That’s been the gender so far.) I do not remember Indiana’s presidential primary as being of importance since 1968. 

   4) Wild prediction: Jeb Bush will get a call to take off his sweats, check in at the scorer’s table, and get his right-wing butt ready to go into the game. Mitt Romney? Seriously? Or Newt Gingrich? Frankly, President Obama has disappointed me. That aside, in the words of King Theodan of Rohan (from The Lord of the Rings), "Is that the best you have, Sauron?" or something like that. Of course in the next scene, an orc placed a bomb under the wall and ... well, you get the picture. I do not like Jeb Bush for that matter. But as a viable candidate, he beats the crap out of anybody else that’s been standing on those stages engaged in non-debate so far.

   5) And if Newt Gingrich (watch the John Lithgow bit from The Colbert Report) receives the nomination, please—please, please, please—spare us any non-stop debates.