The risk with paying attention now is that if you do fall in love with a candidate this late in the process, he or she might be gone in another two or three weeks. In January, trailing candidates are relegated to the curb like the Christmas trees last weekend waiting for the garbage truck. Already after Iowa, Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden called it quits.

The election moves too quickly at this point. It’s a strange thing to complain about especially in this election cycle, which has been going on for more than a year already.

Still, until last week no one had voted yet. The primary election process has the feel of a game show that spends the first 27 minutes introducing the contestants and the last three minutes playing the lightening round to determine the winner.

So, before the candidates start dropping faster than pounds on “The Biggest Loser,” let’s take a look at the way some of the candidates distinguished themselves from the pack so far. Think of these as awards, similar to those given in sports at the end of a season. If the primaries are like the playoffs, then the pre-primary campaign could be thought of as the regular season. The candidates have excelled in many categories this past year. Therefore, it’s now time to present the winners in...

MOST CREATIVE DEFINITION OF A COMMON, EVERYDAY WORD (The Bill Clinton “Depends on What ‘Is’ Is” Award): Mitt Romney wins uncontested for his explanation of what he really meant when he said that he “saw” his father, former Michigan governor George Romney, march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s.

Mitt Romney said he didn’t mean to imply that he actually saw it occur, but instead that he “saw” it in the broader sense of “not having seen it.” At least that is how I heard him explain it on the news, and with a straight face. Maybe from now on he needs to clarify when he really has seen something by adding the phrase “with my own two eyes.”

Romney was unlucky that the late night talk shows weren’t airing new programs when he made this distinction, because they would have had a great time making fun of it. And by unlucky, I am using the alternate Romney definition meaning “to be lucky.”

WORST POSSIBLE CLOSE RELATIVE TO HAVE (The Billy Carter Trophy): This goes to Mike Huckabee, whose son David, as a 17-year-old working at a Boy Scout camp in 1998, hung a stray dog to death. He and another boy were involved. The camp director fired them, but told an animal rights activist that the boys were putting a sick stray “out of his misery.” Clearly, this was a humane act, if we use Romney’s definition of humane.

MOST UNNATURAL LOOKING FEATURE (The Ronald Reagan Non-Graying Hair Prize): My wife, Beth, pointed this out to me and now I can’t stop noticing it. Here are a couple of hints to help you guess what I am referring to: It is a part of Hillary Clinton’s anatomy, there’s a pair of them, and they are round and firm. You guessed it, I am talking about her cheek bones. When she smiles, it looks as if a golf ball was split in two and both halves were implanted under the skin below her eyes. If you hadn’t noticed this before, trust me, you will from now on whenever you see a close-up of her. It’s really odd looking.

THINNEST CANDIDATE NOT CURRENTLY IN THE SECOND MONTH OF A HUNGER STRIKE (The Abe Lincoln Cup): OK, none of the candidates are on a hunger strike. In any case, Barack Obama wins. He might be the skinniest candidate in a hundred years. You can find meth addicts with more body fat. John McCain was probably this thin once, but while a POW. My advice to Obama, should this presidential thing not work out, would be to screw politics and write a diet book. It would be huge, Oprah would still love him, and people would talk about how they tried the South Beach and Atkins diets but were only successful on the Barack plan.

Eventually, though, a detractor would come forward to criticize his diet book, saying, “I knew Dr. Robert Atkins, Dr. Atkins was a friend of mine. Mr. Obama, YOU’RE NO DR. ATKINS!”

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