FOR Oscar-winning film director and noted grump Oliver Stone, it is worse than the Kardashian divorce drama, a piece of semi-scripted sub-reality show nonsense we would be better off ignoring.

"Who's hot right now, who's going to be thrown off the island next?" was how Stone sarcastically summed up the ongoing Republican primary campaigns, before going on to bemoan the lack of attention to the "big issues that are important ... climate control, wars in foreign countries that we created".

"I don't follow the details," Stone sighed. "It is endlessly boring and trivial, like reading People magazine."

Of course most people in America didn't quite catch that last bit. They were too busy wondering if Michele Bachmann has been doing something different to her hair lately (Yahoo debated whether she'd had a "Rachel"). Or whether thrice-married Newt Gingrich could be trusted not to have more affairs. Or whether it was some kind of dizzy contradiction to be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal woman yet come out in hot flushes at the sight of dashing Mitt Romney. Through the media and blogosphere, in beauty parlours and in small-town coffee shops the debate has raged. "Big issues", it seems, are totally relative.

Or maybe it's just that everyone, no matter how ardently they hate gay marriage (something that is much more of a political football in the US than would be imaginable here) or want to keep a gun under their bed, has accepted that this Republican primary is a lost cause, a veritable Wacky Races of unelectable candidates, better savoured for entertainment value than taken altogether seriously. Before the last American presidential election, John Heilemann, a writer for New York Magazine, tartly observed that it was possible to imagine John McCain winning the nomination only if you had drunk "half a bottle of Maker's Mark (whiskey) followed by a nitrous oxide chaser". These days, pretty much the same or worse has been written about each of the presidential wannabe has-beens. And yet the bigger question seems to be if the nomination is even worth having.

It shouldn't be that way of course. No other American president since the Second World War has presided over such gargantuan unemployment figures and lived to see a second term in the White House. The USA is walking wounded. Its commander-in-chief Barack Obama is seen as a stoic, aloof figure, out of touch with ordinary citizens, a man suffering a severe inspiration hangover. The troops may have come home from Iraq, but he hasn't ended the war in Afghanistan or closed Guantanamo or lived up to many of his other campaign promises. He has failed to speak out as police in various cities have brutalised its citizens, the Occupy protesters. To the horror of the liberal grassroots that swept him to office, he has stood to the right of some Republicans on issues such as climate change and gay marriage. Obama's celebrity love-in is also well and truly over. In recent months the unthinkable has happened as the Hollywood royalty that lined up for him in 2008 began a veritable orgy of hand wringing. Matt Damon has said that the president has "misinterpreted his mandate" and that "he's doubled down on a lot of things". Robert Redford proclaimed that the president needed to "roll up his sleeves" on energy reforms. And Jane Lynch, the openly lesbian star of the hit show Glee, called Obama "a huge disappointment to me".

"How's all that hope-y change-y stuff workin' out for ya?" Sarah Palin once asked. "Not well," comes the strangulated rejoinder from the heartland. Palin, of course, has long since ruled herself out of contention -- to the disappointment of the late-night talk shows' joke writers. But based on what we've seen so far, the panel of Republicans who have taken over the party's mantle in her stead would have given her a run for her money in the ditziness stakes.

Leader of the pack, at first -- she won the important "straw poll" micro-election in Iowa last year -- was the woman who drew inevitable comparisons with Palin: mad-eyed Michele Bachmann.

Like Margaret Thatcher before her, the 55-year-old

Minnesota Congresswoman is rabidly right wing and never seen out of Commander In Chief drag -- Eighties shoulder pads and blusher apparently slashed across her cheeks with a broom (reporters aboard her private plane were told that they could write what they liked, but photographing her in her casual clothes was verboten). Top it all off with a Jack Nicholson-in-The-Shining stare -- Chris Matthews of MSNBC once accused her of being hypnotised -- and you have the signature Bachmann look. She has the 24-carat advantage of being from Iowa -- which, when Republicans vote on Tuesday, will launch the process of primaries and caucuses --and the conservative credentials to satisfy even the most right-wing of Tea Partiers.

In the past, Bachmann has expressed fears that America may be "running out of rich people" and has wondered aloud whether congressmen could be tested for "anti- American thinking". But she has, perhaps, primarily become known for her anti-gay views. Her husband, Marcus, runs a Christian ethos counselling clinic which has been accused of trying to "pray the gay away" and she has recently come out as saying that Iowans want their law, which legalises gay marriage, to be overturned. While the stance has won Bachmann a loyal following among the Republican base, it has seen her increasingly out of step with wider America, where polls show an overwhelming majority of young people favour gay marriage. She has been snubbed by talk show hosts such as Jimmy Fallon, whose band played the Roots song "Dirty Lyin Bi***" as her intro song. At a book signing event in South Carolina in early December she moved in for a photo-op cuddle with an eight-year-old who was then heard to murmur, "my mommy is gay and she doesn't need any fixing".

For any other candidate that would have been the death knell (even if it was a transparently creepy stunt on the part of the adult with the child) but it's thought that the boat may have already sailed for Bachmann. Polls now show her in the lower tier of candidates vying to challenge President Obama. The congresswoman has countered by saying that the campaign is like a "political Wall Street" with stocks rising and falling on a weekly basis. Top of that pile until the week before Christmas was Newt Gingrich, the white-haired former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, who, after a disastrous summer -- staffers alleged constant meddling by his wife, Callista -- had rebounded to head the pack. To those outside America, Gingrich is most famous as the man who lead the drive to impeach president Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky episode. When it later emerged that Gingrich had himself at the time been conducting an extra-martial affair he became an emblem of political hypocrisy, a hate figure for the left. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, summed him up thus: "A serial adulterer while impeaching another serial adulterer, a lobbyist for Freddie Mac while attacking Freddie Mac, a self-professed fiscal conservative with a whopping Tiffany's credit line and an anti-Communist army brat who supported the Vietnam War but dodged it."

Ironically Gingrich's fillip came because of the alleged extra-martial activities of another candidate -- pizza parlour magnate and outspoken critic of Obama, Herman Cain. While other politicians tell people what they want to hear, Cain admonished Americans: "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself." In early December the Atlanta businessman, who had led polls in some states, announced he was suspending his campaign after a number of women alleged he had sexually harassed them. Cain was beginning to wobble anyway -- he didn't seem to have a breeze about foreign policy -- but his abrupt exit left the way open for Gingrich to regain the lead at least for a while. His campaign has been poorly organised -- Bush mentor and conservative polling guru Karl Rove called it "embarrassing" -- and the conservative base that would rally around Bachmann, for instance, finds his personal life somewhat less than biblically sanctioned.

Let's recap: Gingrich dumped wife number one for wife number two while wife number one was sick in hospital with cancer -- she claimed that he actually brought her the divorce papers as she lay in bed (the candidate and one of his daughters have denied this, but a former staffer corroborated it and said that Gingrich had also said that wife number one was "not pretty enough" to be the First Lady). He eventually divorced wife number two not long after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and while he was moving on to wife number three he was attempting to have Clinton booted out of office for adultery. It seems that Gingrich has now met his match -- he had to suspend campaigning when wife number three refused to cancel a lavish cruise around the Greek islands this summer (campaign staffers were appalled) but it might not be such a happy ending with voters. David Frum, George Bush's political speechwriter, believes that it may not be so much the infidelity per se but rather the "arrogance, hypocrisy and -- most horrifying to women voters -- the cruelty" that will be so "politically lethal". Gingrich for his part says that God has forgiven him and he doesn't see why primary voters shouldn't do the same. Especially when he had the gall, um, ingenuity, to reframe his philandering past as a collateral damage in a noble, patriotic mission: "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that weren't appropriate." Translation: he did it for America.

In recent weeks, the other candidates' attacks on Gingrich seem to have hit home, with Mitt Romney (25 per cent) just three points behind him and closing in fast in national polls. Still, some say the race can be reduced down to the acronym "ABR" -- Anyone But Romney. Indeed in Iowa, local polls put Ron Paul in the lead.

Romney, the smooth-talking former governor of Massachusetts, doesn't have any of the personal baggage of Gingrich or Cain -- he stood by his beautiful wife, Ann, as she battled multiple sclerosis and his family life is wholesome to the extent that it was felt at one point that he needed "humanising". He isn't an ideological zealot like Bachmann but he earned his conservative stripes by coming out strongly against gay marriage in Massachusetts. He looks presidential -- the Atlantic Monthly has swooned over his "chiselled handsomeness" and television host Conan O'Brien, for one, thinks he is "too sexy". He's a proven business leader and is credited with the runaway success of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. And yet a large swathe of Republicans would rather call the whole thing off than hand him the nomination. Why this distaste? Romney has been accused of "flip-flopping" on issues -- he was for abortion before he was against it -- and the healthcare law he enacted while governor of Massachusetts bears an uncanny similarity to the one Obama has tried to bring in nationally, which has been greeted by Tea Party activists holding up signs saying things such as "baby killer". But neither of those things is reckoned to be an insurmountable obstacle.

No, the real problem with Romney seems to be that he is a Mormon. Despite its sober, hardworking adherents the religion still carries the whiff of a sect. Almost a fifth of Americans say they would have a problem with a Mormon in the White House, and that number is even higher again among evangelical Christians, who are estimated to make up a third of the Republican electorate. Southern Baptists particularly have labelled Mormonism a "cult". When asked "how Mormon are you?" Romney's responses have been cagey and political, which won't allay anyone's fears. Conservative commentator Robert Novak has called Romney's religion "his greatest liability".

The most exciting moments of Romney's campaign so far came in the vicious, almost personal, public debates with Texas governor and fellow candidate, erstwhile southern dreamboat Rick Perry. At their most recent televised sparring match George W Bush's one-time underling attacked Romney for hiring illegal immigrants to work on his gigantic front lawn while the former Massachusetts governor taunted Perry for his series of mortifying flubs -- when pressed he couldn't remember the name of one of the governmental departments he had, seconds before, righteously vowed to abolish.

Perry -- another former leader of the Republican polls -- drew ridicule last month as he made another headline-worthy gaffe -- forgetting and then mispronouncing the name of Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayer and then mistakenly saying there are eight justices on the Supreme Court bench, when there are nine. He responded by producing a campaign ad that looked (if you turned the sound down) like an outtake from Brokeback Mountain and claimed that Christianity was being stealthily outlawed in the US. "You don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in schools." It was the hyperbolic parting shot of a desperate man and some publications, including the Globe and Mail in Canada, wondered if he couldn't be indicted for hate speech. So far the ad has been "disliked" by half a million people on YouTube, which means Perry has little chance of converting that small slice of swing voters who decide presidential elections. In addition, people still mix him up with Rick Santorum -- one of the least known contenders, who blamed same-sex marriage for falling marriage rates and regards George Bush as the first Catholic president of the US. Neither Rick seems to be in with much of a chance.

That's a charge that can't be levelled at Ron Paul, the Texan congressman who, on many issues, talks the most sense of any of the candidates but has until now been stereotyped nationally as an also-ran for his repeated failed attempts to take the White House. Beloved among college students for his desire to legalise marijuana (they don't listen to the next bit: "and don't come crying to the healthcare system when you develop cancer") Dr No, as he's known for opposing bills that increase the size of government, is the oldest candidate in the field and the joke goes that he loves the constitution so much because he remembers it being signed. Paul has been surging in December and may well leave the rest of the field scratching its heads in defeat next year.

But often primary election bids aren't so much bona fide attempts to get into office, as they are shrewd stunts to raise the candidates' public profile and sell whatever tat they're hawking. So it was with Donald Trump, the bombastic property magnate whose mesmerising combover the New York Times described as "an architectural marvel". Trump flirted with a presidential bid for months during the spring of 2011 before finally announcing that he would not run in May. The reason was believed to be that several well-respected Republican strategists turned down offers to manage his campaign but his White House-sized ego was said to have been pricked when the president of NBC publicly said that The Apprentice would get along just fine if Trump left the show. Since then The Donald has recast himself as a Republican kingmaker -- a status bolstered when Gingrich recently paid a high-profile visit to him at one of his Manhattan towers.

Hovering over all of these spectacles, like the nanny in some Tom and Jerry episode, is Obama. Even with the economy in a shambles, and unflattering comparisons to Jimmy Carter piling up, he will still look like the adult in the room when faced with any of the Republican goons. According to a survey by the respected Public Policy Polling organisation the incumbent still leads every single significant poll against every single one of his potential presidential rivals. Recent foreign policy successes -- the killing of Osama Bin Laden, bringing the troops home from Iraq -- have resonated with a war-weary public. Unemployment is still worryingly high but at its lowest level in two years -- the trend is hopeful. The re-election team's use of the phrase "slam dunk" is probably premature but chances are that come January 2013 he will once again be dancing with Michelle on the White House lawn. In the meantime the world can only hope and pray that the US's conservative party keeps the jokes and reality TV scenarios coming thick and fast. It's been a rough few years and right now America needs all the cheering up she can get.

- Donal Lynch