Voters waited as long as one and a half hours to vote at Easy Reader and other local polling places on Tuesday. (Moments after taking this photo, Easy Reader photographer Bev Morse was hit by a car and suffered a leg fracture. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, but not before saving the photo on her office computer.

One of the problems with newspaper deadlines is that they are sometimes inconvenient in terms of delivering up-to-the-minute information. (By the way, in one sentence, you can see why the daily newspaper business is in the dire straits it is.) However, some political observations are still in order about the 2007/2008 race for the Presidency.

The length of the race is insane. While this is an unusual cycle in that neither a sitting President nor Vice President is running, it is still way too long a process. But, even more worrying is the amount of money involved in this process. When Barack Obama chose to reject public financing, the final nail in the coffin of that process was struck into place. No future Presidential candidate will put him or herself into that strait jacket.

For a political junkie, this has been an opportunity to see how campaign management decisions by the candidates and their staffs have powerful effects. Two amazingly bad campaigns were run. Rudy Guiliani (Mr. Noun ‘ Verb - 9/11) ended up like the horse that doesn’t respond to the opening bell at the race track. He stayed in the gate at Hialeah, Florida and never was heard from again.

Yet, the most intriguing bad campaign was Hillary Clinton’s. The single most devastating decision was to not strongly contest the caucuses that are an important part of the Democratic Party election process. The Clinton campaign’s overconfidence that she would win the primaries and have the nomination locked up by Super Tuesday was its downfall.

As soon as Obama won in Iowa, the flaw in that strategy became clear. Obama was for real. Particularly African-Americans around the country, who were natural Clinton supporters, said, OK. Maybe he’s got something here. It was, essentially, over right then.

There is still one more campaign to add to the list. If Obama wins, there will be questioning of the Republican Party nomination process of giving the winner of its primaries all the delegates from that state, the selection of Sarah Palin, the choice to accept government funds, and other decisions. If McCain wins, there will be questions about whether it was Obama’s race, his lack of experience, his choice of Biden over Clinton and other decisions that will be challenged for years.

The only thing that is clear from this campaign is that future Presidential campaigns will be worse, because it will all be about money. Obama has shown that it is tantamount to unilateral disarmament to accept public funds. His enormous fund raising lead has allowed him to purchase media and ground staff beyond anything seen in history.

The real question we must ask is whether this is the way to elect a President? When we look back at the start of this race, most of the good people who were eliminated were gone because they could get fund raising traction. So, we may only be electing the people who have a particular talentattracting campaign money.

That certainly doesn’t necessarily qualify him or her as a good potential leader. ER