Slogan's run.

In one of Barack Obama's speeches leading into the last weekend before the Presidential election, he casually mentioned the “twenty months” he has spent travelling the country during the campaign. Obama declared his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination in January 2007 which means that he will have spent almost two years trying to secure the Presidency by the time the result is declared. That's one hell of a job interview.

The extraordinary length of the campaign combined with the attention it gains from the media is starting to create a situation where ‘becoming’ President is more important than ‘being’ President. According to modern lore, the new President will begin his re-election campaign before he even delivers his inauguration speech.

The challenges of our era are not inconsiderable and it is profligate to devote so much time and energy to deciding who will lead us through it. It’s like turning up to a major sports event and discovering that most of the interest surrounds the coin toss... it’s become massively disproportionate and it gets worse with each election. It’s obvious that we need to claw back from where we are today... but it’s very hard to know how this can be done.

And we can’t really pin the blame on politicians for all of this. We can’t even blame the media. It’s actually the public who have created this monster because of our interest in politics is only roused by conflict and the certainties delivered by a contest. All of the focus and energy of the coverage is dedicated to uncovering the answer to a single question... ‘who will win?’ Once that question has been answered, the only question liable to provoke similar excitement is... ‘who will win next time?’

And while it’s understandable that many commentators are encouraged by the massive interest generated by this year’s election, they are being naive if they imagine that interest will be sustained once the election is over... it’s like expecting sports fans to stick around to watch their favourite combatants warm down after the game is won.

Presidential elections have become ‘The X Factor’ of global politics. The public are thrilled with the prospect of watching a group of wannabes being whittled down to the last two and then slugging it out on live television to determine which of them will win the prize but they really don’t care too much what then happens to the victor. How then does it remain something that people want to win? Is it because of a belief that they can buck the trend and become the winner who makes a difference? Or is it because they are so focussed on the contest that they too don’t really see beyond it?

We are constantly told how much this election matters. And, to be fair, if any election matters then it has to be this one. But arguably the most important thing determined by this election is the identity of one of the two candidates in the 2012 Presidential election... and that’s too depressing for words.