Last week I finally watched the Republican debate at Dearborn, Michigan that a friend had TIVOed. Having put off submerging myself in the Presidential race this long, I was eager to dive right in. After all, I am a Republican, and since Hillary has a commanding lead in the Democratic field as of now, odds are the candidate I'm voting for is one of the nine (well, eight now that Brownback is out) who took the stage that night. Add in a strong interest in politics and a facination with debate, and I should've had a blast of a time watching the debate.

Two hours later, my friend and I both felt like we had gone through an ordeal. I was drained and overall unenthused and uninterested. It took me some time, but I think I've finally found out three reasons why.

#1: There are too many candidates.

Nine men took the stage that night. Out of those nine, only four were actually relevant: Rudy Guliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson. If you're counting amusement value, you can put Ron Paul in there as well. Even then, counting Paul, that's just barely more than half of the field. The rest is padded out with generic candidates who didn't make much of an impression beyond how generic they were. The result was a bunch of men getting together, largely agreeing with each other, arguing about how much they agree and trying to explain how their specific form of argeeing is better. The only interesting part of the debate was the part where you had Guliani and Romney directly clashing with each other. Circumstances like that make the whole two hour affair feel largely irrelevant.

#2: Timing.

The Iowa Caucuses aren't for another three months and the general election isn't for over a year, so I'm tempted to say it's too early. However, I'm also tempted not to as this campaign has been going on for months. Even though I haven't been specifically following this I still hear about and read about everything involving the campaign trail in the news. The result is a pseudo fatigue; not because I'm truly tired of it, but because at this point of time the accumulated level of fatigue has surpassed the amount of caring I can muster. This is just another point indicating that this campaign started way too early.

#3: The candidates.

You already heard me dismiss about half the field of candidates. Brownback is history. Huckabee, Tancredo, and Hunter don't have a snowball's chance. Ron Paul's campaign platform makes me want to laugh out loud and shake my head in disgust at the same time.
That being said, Ron Paul is the only one who was consistantly interesting during the debate. Guliani came across to me as rather plain, McCain seemed nervous, Romney just oozed with the same type of rehersed politican style that turns me off to John Edwards so much, and Fred Thompson seemed half awake for much of the debate. All-in-all, it's not a field that has any interesting or captivating candidates like a Ronald Regan or a JFK.

In the end, I think that last point is what made the event so draining. With it came the realization that, once again, this election is going to be choosing not the best candidate as much as it is choosing the lesser of two evils.