There are 615 days to Election Day 2008 as of this writing, and I’m not gonna make it. I’m not. With the recent Hillary/Obama snipefest already firing up the vast frothing political mediasphere/blogosphere (a ‘sphere’ that is much more vast than actual public interest), I don’t see how we sustain actual public interest for more than a year and a half.

Actually, we don’t. Public interest is more likely to bloom and fade in cycles as the election season crawls along. There will be some ramping up this fall, as we get close to the early elections and caucuses, and then the election calendar is so compressed that it virtually assures only the best-known/best-funded candidates can win the party contests. We all like to think that actual campaigning matters, but in this compressed primary environment, it’s really going to be all about the TV — particularly ‘paid TV,’ as in ‘campaign ads.’

And then we’ll have a nice, long — and I do mean looooong — lull until the 2008 political conventions.

It will be fascinating to see who emerges from this process. I’m not sure America can take another cheap, divisive, mean-spirited general election. I think it might be what America is going to get.