It’s impossible, unless one was to time-travel back to the 19th century, to find a U.S. political cycle that’s more entertainment-packed than the current presidential race. Maybe it’s the sheer number of foot-in-mouth candidates that accounts for the hilarity, but that’s not especially unique. More likely, it’s the combination of an expanding media industry, semi-boredom with Bush-bashing, and most significantly, the lack of any consensus favorite (in both the Democratic and Republican parties) that’s led to such a festive atmosphere on television, in print and online.

Republicans, terrified of losing not only the White House but further erosion in Congress as well, are nastier than usual this year. Younger readers might not remember Pitchfork Pat Buchanan, the anti-Semitic, homophobic and isolationist pundit and good-time-Charlie presidential candidate, but conservatives are making fools of themselves trying to replicate his disgraceful moral authority on the subject of immigration. When John McCain—the cream of an exceedingly thin GOP field—took time off from fundraising to attend a Senate meeting on the convoluted better-than-nothing immigration bill, Sen. John Cornyn chastised him for “parachuting” into the debate. McCain’s response: “Fuck you.” OK, no points for originality, but it was better than a hollow “I strongly disagree with my distinguished colleague and dear friend from the great state of Texas.”

Better yet is McCain’s jousting with the abysmal Mitt Romney, who took offense when the former media pin-up had the nerve to make fun of his rival’s exaggeration about his hunting prowess. McCain said, chiding Mitt for his waffling on immigration, that maybe he should “get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn.” As Howard Fineman—on the subject of greasy reporters—reported in an online Newsweek column last week, an anonymous Romney operative retorted: “That’s what happens to a guy of McCain’s age [70] when he doesn’t take his Metamucil. I don’t think he is the kind of angry fellow we want alone with the nuclear arsenal.”

And despite all the enthused chatter about Fred Thompson entering the GOP fray—supposedly he “looks presidential”—I doubt the “Law & Order” actor will elevate the party’s internal discussions.

The Democrats are just as hopeless, desperate and pretty darn funny. 

The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, in a May 22 short for the web-only “Political Diary,” writes: “Reporters on the campaign trail are now seriously debating a key question: Is presidential candidate John Edwards, who has built his campaign around the appeal to the have-nots of America, a complete and utter phony?” That’s a tease, obviously—the blurb is headlined “Little Lord Fauntleroy Feels Your Pain, Maybe”—since the former senator, who owns the largest house in North Carolina, is running one of the weirdest campaigns in memory. On the one hand, Edwards is making some smart strategic decisions, tacking decidedly to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and attempting, with a lot of success, to nail down the union vote. But then there’s the $400 haircut, his $55,000 fee for speaking about poverty last year at the University of California at Davis, and his brief employment at a hedge fund that lined his coffers by almost half a million bucks.

It’s the haircut, however, that’ll do him in. We had guests in from Los Angeles last week, solid Democrats, and they were appalled by the symbolism of Edwards cavalierly slipping into one of the two Americas where such expensive grooming isn’t given a second thought. How can he talk, my friend asked, with pained passion about the misery of outsourced factory workers and the lack of universal healthcare when several snips of his locks cost more than the rent so many “have-nots” pay for crummy housing each month?

Steve Kornacki, in The New York Observer last week, blamed the “G.O.P. machine” for publicizing the contradictions of Edwards’ words and personal decisions, but it wasn’t Karl Rove who advised the one-term multimillionaire senator that ostentatiously padding his bank account was a surefire way to win over the left-wing Democratic voter base. Over at Josh Marshall’s well-read website, “Talking Points Memo Café,” Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld complained that The New York Times was giving Edwards far less coverage than Clinton and Obama, citing a Nexis search that for the previous three months the front-runners had been mentioned in twice as many articles as Edwards. One poster responded to Sargent and Kleefeld by writing: “Edwards’ Progressive policies are opposed by the corporate media who have already selected the winner [Clinton].”

The Times Co. certainly is a corporate entity, but the paper’s editors and “thinkers” (Frank Rich had a column called “Elizabeth Edwards for President” and Paul Krugman is intellectually in hock to those who favor state-mandated healthcare) are hardly hostile to Edwards. In fact, a May 22 editorial nearly excused Edwards’ “holdings in a lately controversial hedge fund,” because he allegedly “was learning more about the financial market’s interplay with poverty.” The writer added that, “Disclosures like this prompt healthy discussion.”

“Healthy” isn’t the word the paper used to slam Rudy Giuliani for grossing more than $11 million in 9/11-related speaking fees and book sales. I happen to agree that Giuliani’s financial exploitation of 9/11 is really creepy, but then so is Edwards accepting a lot of money from the “corporate” world to bone up on the travails of Americans less wealthy than him.

The certifiable Keith Olbermann, MSNBC talk show host, is furious at congressional Democrats who aren’t voting for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. In a “Countdown” comment on his station’s website on May 23, Olbermann was in solidarity with his MoveOn.org buddies by demanding that any Democrat—such as Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer—who didn’t stand up to George Bush must be voted out of office. Sounds like a solid plan to me, although the rhetoric resembles that of a “Peace is patriotic” middle-school student. “The Democrat leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that Democrats ‘give the troops their money’.” He continues, “The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans.”

Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd is chuckling over how fat Al Gore is.

The level of dissatisfaction among voters—and more people are paying attention to this show than the media believes—is so high that the horrifying prospect of Mike Bloomberg entering the scrum as a third-party candidate early next year might actually come to pass. That would be a bonanza for consultants and television stations who’d divvy up the billion or so dollars Bloomberg might spend, and a potential Rudy/Hillary/Mike election is the stuff of extraordinary street theater, but talk about holding your noses when going to the polls less than 18 months from now.