The political silliness up North was not much different this week from the silliness in the United States. The Conservative Party had to pull an internet ad that showed a bird dropping a load on the shoulder of the Liberal Party candidate for prime minister, while in America the Obama camp fielded statements of purported outrage from Republicans over the Democratic candidate's reference to putting "lipstick on a pig", a quip supposedly directed at that most-un-piglike vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

One can laugh because none of that kind of stuff matters. It is political wheel spinning.

What does matter is the bald reality that Canada only began its national campaign on September 7 and yet will hold the election on October 14. Canada's prompt and considered decision will come three full weeks before the United States' campaign stumbles to its completion, following two years of fund raising, fulsome rallies where crowds only come to life for the cameras and dissipated lifetimes of cable-heads shouting interruptions. Whether November 4, really is the elections terminus, of course, depends on having an outcome that is not close. Otherwise, as in 2000, the lawyers take over the next morning and you can add another month of nerve-jerking anxiety.

In America, we have made national campaign politics the chief activity of public life. Canadians, with their simple system of party voting, will know the results of their election soon after the polls close.

America's presidential selection process is muscle bound, demoralizing and wasteful. A billion dollars is being raised by the lead presidential campaigns, and that doesn't include the untold bucks invested by noxious special interest groups and para-partisan advocacy causes that have no accountability (thank you McCain/Feingold).

Campaigns bring out bad qualities in otherwise good public leaders, but while that means a rough couple of months in Canada or in most other civilized nations, we stew on the political stove indefinitely. Our leaders have a hard time showing anything other than their bad side.

A couple of liberal stars of Congress, Jim McDermott of Washington and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, have so lost their composure that they are calling for impeachment of President Bush, even as the current POTUS is lassoing up his last hurricane crisis and ridin' for the ranch. How long do they think a trial would take? Would Dubyah have to come back from retirement in Crawford to face re-retirement? McDermott and Kucinich remind me of the frustrated inquisitors in the Middle Ages who had dead men dug up so the corpses could be properly drawn and quatered.

But then there is Canada, where the myrid opponents of Prime Minister Stephen Harper have a hard time developing a sincerely nasty description of him. The anti-Harper case seems to reduce to his reputed dullness and lack of imagination. What a joy for Harper!

Seriously, "dull" in politics is usually a blessing. Dull incumbents tend to get returned to office. Dull means they can't find much worse to say about you.

But in the US of A, the button and banner printers probably are planning to follow their past two years of non-stop production with either "Impeach McCain" or "Impeach Obama" campaign materials, depending on the November 4 returns. It's a rush job. They need to be ready for sale by Christmas, at least a few weeks before the unfortunate winner is sworn in.

Both Republicans and Democrats promise "change" and "reform". Well, how about "change" and "reform" of the interminable presidential election process?