Every week we learn more about the folly of allowing presidential hopefuls to campaign for nearly as many years as the term of office they’re running to win. We get gazillion-dollar campaigns, a field of billionaire candidates, a shuffling primary schedule, a thousand indistinguishable debates and jet-lagged, brain-muddled bumbling on campaign stops.

Pundits, fans, undecided voters, debate watchers are all wondering what’s happening to Obama, for example. Where’s the fire? Why won’t he take Hillary on? Is he angling for a cabinet appointment?

To me he just seems tired. He has a personal style that’s understated, intelligent, even subtle. He thinks about things. In Iowa this week, distracted, he took pains to explain why he doesn’t wear the vapid USA flag-pin on his lapel. He said something brief. Then a staffer tried to clarify. Then finally Obama had to dedicate a stump speech specifically to the absent flag-pin, as if a man running for president needs a flag-pin to signal his commitment to his country.

It’s the first week of October, more than a year out, and even always-on motormouth Rudy Giuliani is appearing sluggish. Racing in and out of local joints on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border, he sounded off to a clutch of New Hampshirites about how the Democrats would “raise taxes on people here in Massachusetts anywhere between three- and four-thousand dollars a person.” The Granite Staters were understandably unimpressed.

How about poor Bill Richardson, who looked three cocktails too comfortable in his attempts to unravel Melissa Etheridge’s rudimentary gay rights question at the Logo Forum this summer. “In your opinion do people choose to be gay or are they born that way?” It’s a starting-point kind of question and well-meaning Bill fumbled hopelessly for full minutes with it, no doubt regretting his on-flight beverage choices. The look on Etheridge’s face is priceless.

It’s the digital age. Should we perhaps give up the traditional mass-illusion that presidential candidates are able to truly care about all the state and local issues that span the continent and that they are going to address them all personally once in office? Should we declare every other month travel-free campaign time and let the candidates do YouTubes in their pajamas from their bedrooms?

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This story was reported by Torey van Oot.

Tags: 08 race, giuliani, new hampshire, taxes