HarryShearer.com

Just for purposes of comparison…

• In Canada, the minimum length for a campaign is 36 days, and the longest ever was 74 days (in 1926);

• In Australia, the campaign must be a minimum of 33 days (the longest ever was 11 weeks in 1910);

• In France, the official election campaign usually lasts no more than 2 weeks;

• In Japan, campaigning is allowed for 12 days; and

• UK Parliament general elections have a 25-working-day timetable, as set out in schedule 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. By-elections for the UK Parliament have a more flexible timetable of 21 to 27 days.

But America is indisputably #1 in this category: our election season begins in January and ends in the following November. By this time in the calendar, per CNN today:

A voter in Lawrence, Kansas, said you’d have to “turn off your phone and not get on the computer and not have a television” to avoid the onslaught of political ads. “You just cannot escape,” she said.

In the days of horse, and, later, buggy, it made some sense for campaigns to cover an extended period of time. Today, the only people who benefit from this yearlong onslaught are political consultants and local TV stations. A sane American campaign schedule might have primaries occur in July and August, and the general election campaign running from September to early November.

It’s a longtime truism among American political observers that most people don’t start paying attention to campaigns until late in the schedule. Maybe most people are right.