Along the Way: Wake me when it’s over

Lately I have fought off the temptation to send a generous check to one of the presidential candidates.

The amount I could come up with wouldn’t help either man, for one thing.

And I think they’re both duds, for another.

Down deep I’m sure they’re good guys trying to do the right thing for the right reasons.

I’m just tired of them and the whole process.

It seems like this campaign started when I was about a sophomore in high school, when cars had running boards and hard drives were baseballs hit by Mickey Mantle.

This thing has gone on for so long, John McCain’s hair turned white and Barack Obama turned voting age.

I’m tired of it all and I suspect there are others — many others — who feel the same.

Just get it over with.

And let’s get this country back on track in spite of, if not because of, the winning ticket.

The first order of business for the next administration ought to be a new law limiting presidential campaigns to one calendar year. Six months would be even better.

Television pundits and analysts cut short of work could go back to their jobs as pretzel-salters and quality control geeks. How many of these campaigns has Pat Buchanan been through, anyhow? Wasn’t he our 15th president?

Oh, so that was James Buchanan. Whatever.

It seems to me the real beneficiaries of this perpetual poppycock are the television networks and cable outfits. The money poured into television by the two political camps would probably wipe out the national debt.

All it does for ordinary people is prolong the agony of watching and listening to the boring, mind-numbing campaigns and send us reaching for the remote to check out the latest infomercial.

We don’t need to drill for oil as much as we need to punch a hole in this outrageous political gasbag and deflate it, at least somewhat.

This country doesn’t need to bring back the nickel cigar, it needs more re-runs of “Law and Order,” more lachrymose soap operas and more infomercials — to soak up television time now dominated by politics.

OK. I know there are dedicated, patriotic, good-hearted people who believe in this stuff with all their hearts and a good bit of their treasury.

They support their party and its candidate. They volunteer for this and that and they believe deeply in the process.

Bless their campaign buttons. I love them one and all.

But the show must go on and on and on ... it’s the American way.

That’s the part that drives us up the wall.

I feel about political campaigns the way I feel about the National Basketball Association, which also goes on and on and on.

In a perfect world, for me, the NBA would start the season with the playoff finals.

That way, with only two teams in a best-of-seven showdown, the season would only last a month. Maybe two.

The air inside an official NBA basketball is exactly equal to the value of the league, in this humble opinion.

And being as consistent as I am magnanimous, I feel the same about politics.

So, best of luck, Barack and John. May the best man win.

And by the way, could we just hurry this thing up a bit?

Corky Simpson, former Tucson Citizen columnist and first inductee into the Arizona Associated Press Sports Editors Hall of Fame, writes a Friday column for the Green Valley News.