by Bruno Somerset

Created on: February 04, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

There is little doubt that the primary season in this country is too long. In fact, it can hardly be called a "season" any more, since it seems to go on forever. It actually makes the baseball and NBA seasons seem short by comparison

Right after the 2006 mid-term elections, and two years from the Presidential elections, candidates were already running for President. The new Democratic majority in Congress had a unique opportunity to make some much needed changes to the way things have been done in Washington over the last decade, but for many of the key leaders in Congress, focus had already shifted to replacing George W. Bush.

There is a tremendous amount of work to be done in this country, and yet for more than a year several of our most prominent leaders have only one thing on their mind: trying to get a better job. John McCain, Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and a host of others all either announced their candidacy or formed exploratory committees mere weeks after the new Congress began its work.

Obama, Clinton, McCain, Biden and the rest seem to think we don't care if they focus on the job they were elected by their constituents to do, and sadly it appears that they are right. There was no outcry from the general public that rather than tackling the issues that face the nation, these public servants were trying to line up support for primaries that were still a year away. I'm fairly confident that if I told my boss that I was going to spend the next two years applying for a better position, he wouldn't take it so well.

Even worse, both the public and the media moved into a cult-of-personality mentality. Sen. Obama, for example, has been covered as if he were Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan or the newest NFL star. We should think long and hard about the true qualifications of a candidate, because we are living with the results of not having done so six years ago.

It would not be difficult to revise Federal Election laws to curb this ongoing insanity. For example, no forming of Presidential Exploration Committees until a year before the election date. This would reduce the amount of money that could be spent pre-primary. Publicly funding all campaigns with a hard spending cap would be even better. It would eliminate the ongoing problem with loopholes in the campaign finance laws.

Whatever it takes to curb this trend needs to be done. We have the right to expect that our representatives actually spend their time doing what we pay them to do: represent us. Otherwise, we'll just keep paying our elected leaders to be professional candidates. And the campaigning for 2012 just might start the day after Christmas 2008.

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