By David Pisarra

The horse race — well, the Democratic Donkey race is more like it — is off and running. With this weekend’s fateful announcement by Senator Hillary Clinton that she is entering the race for the Democratic Primary and, eventually, the White House; the topic du jour of all TV news pundits, columnists and talking heads is presidential politics — for the next 21 months.

There will be essays that will describe the end of the world that a Hillary victory would ignite. There will be hours dedicated to pundits on TV chewing on the racial implications of a Barack Obama in the White House.

This next presidential election will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a billion. Money that could and should be spent by those donating, on far greater efforts than deciding which politician has told us the most convincingly what we wanted to hear.

Gender politics is certainly going to rear its ugly head again. We will hear time and time again how people don’t like Hillary because she stood by Mr. Clinton in the face of his adultery. These are generally the same people who are also screaming that gay marriage is an affront to humanity and an attack on our sacred way of life. Of course, had Mrs. Clinton divorced Mr. Clinton, she would have been pilloried as a ‘cut and run’ wife who left her husband and evaded her vows.

Experience counts, some will say, and that is reason to be against Senator Obama. Then, these same people will turn around and claim that Hillary is a bad choice because experience has shown her to be unethical — even though she has not been indicted or charged with anything illegal.

Gov. Bill Richardson entered the fray, hoping to jump from his home state of New Mexico to 1600 Pennsylvania in one breathtaking leap. John Edwards is trying his hand again in a crowded field, hoping that his experience two years ago will yield better results this time.

The Republicans are fielding some impressive early comers in Mitt Romney and Senator Sam Brownback, and Senator John McCain will enter the game early this time.

What does all of this mean to us the voters? It means that money, money, money will be running the next presidency, much as it has the current one. It means that the likelihood of an independent ever running a convincing campaign becomes less and less likely. It means that campaign reform will be less likely than ever.

This early competition for money also means that campaigns have to crystallize faster, positions must be taken and then defended sooner. Early ‘training camps’ for the candidates must ramp up that much faster as the candidates are facing debates, interviews and the tiresome vetting process that much earlier in the process.

The debates are beginning already, with New Hampshire and South Carolina planning debates this spring. This process of early position-taking by candidates makes for a campaign that will have a hard time gauging what the public wants. It precludes the candidates from getting much input from the voters, but a lot from their big contributors, who will have a much easier time getting the precious amount of face time a candidate has for meetings.

When people ask why can’t we get good people to run for office, this is a prime example of what scares off capable candidates. A capable candidate is essentially forced to sell out to the big money contributors, they must dance to the tune of big business because the little guy has no voice.

Who would want to spend the next 20 months shaking down people for money, having their life opened up to scrutiny by all quarters, and being “on” for 12 to 18 hours a day, giving the same stump speech five times a day, and trying each time to pack it with a punch? This is a process that is designed, not to weed out the inappropriate, but to ensure the weak of ethics are guaranteed election.

There should be a moratorium on campaigning prior to 12 months before an election. We should make this process shorter and more focused. It should be an open field that allows more candidates to participate.

Only the independently wealthy, or those already on the public payroll, can now afford to run for the office that every child is told, they can run for. Sadly, that is no longer true. It is a lie, just like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and all people are created equal. Not because they are the wrong skin color or the wrong gender, but simply because they don’t have access to corporate checkbooks.

Candidates are now determined not on their merits, but on their Mastercard.

David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law fim of Pisarra & Grist. He can be reached at (310) 664-9969 or dpisarra@pisarra.com.