The presidential election is more than a year away but things are hotting up. Donald Trump is now putting his toe in the water, even if he finds shaking hands for votes is unsanitary.
At the beginning of the year it looked like this. Vice-President Al Gore would have a clear run for the Democratic nomination as his big rival, Dick Gephardt, was not going to challenge him but concentrate on becoming the next speaker of the House of Representatives.
On the Republican side, there was a motley crew seeking the party nomination, none of whom stood out. The familiar names of Dole and Bush were there but in this case the wife of Bob Dole and the son of president George Bush. Vietnam war hero Senator John McCain, multi-millionaire Steve Forbes, former vice-president Dan Quayle, media commentator Pat Buchanan, Christian conservative Gary Bauer, and a half-dozen other hopefuls were also putting themselves forward as the Republican standard-bearer who could take back the White House after eight years of Bill Clinton and his shenanigans.
Now things look a lot different, with the New Hampshire primary only four months away.
On the Republican side, Governor George W. Bush of Texas is so far ahead in the polls and in fundraising that his rivals are dropping out, threatening to bolt to the Reform Party or just limping along, hoping that "W" will trip himself up in a cocaine scandal or be exposed as an airhead on foreign policy.
On the Democratic side, Al Gore is running scared of former senator Bill Bradley, a one-time basketball star and Rhodes scholar whose campaign Mr Gore had not deigned to notice. That was until Senator Bradley revealed he had outstripped Mr Gore in fund-raising, and is running ahead in the polls in the crucial primary states of New Hampshire and New York.
This week, Mr Gore moved his campaign headquarters from Washington to Nashville in his native Tennessee, appointed a new manager, began to attack Mr Bradley personally and challenged him to a series of debates. Mr Gore, who has been plagued by media criticism of his "woodenness", is now wearing light-coloured suits and trying to loosen up.
While nationally Mr Gore is well ahead of Senator Bradley in polls for the Democratic nomination, the former senator performs much better when the two of them are matched against Governor Bush. Senator Daniel Moynihan, when endorsing Senator Bradley, said out loud what many Democrats are thinking. Mr Gore can't beat George W. Bush but maybe Senator Bradley can.
Looking over their shoulders is the Hollywood heart-throb, Warren Beatty, who toys with entering the campaign for the Democratic nomination himself while berating the two rivals for abandoning traditional Democratic liberalism in the rush to the centre ground.
Looking over Governor Bush's shoulder is Pat Buchanan, who has no hope of the Republican nomination which he sought in two previous campaigns. But he is on the point of moving to Ross Perot's Reform Party. This would be bad news for Governor Bush as Mr Buchanan could then split the Republican vote, with the conservative, anti-abortion voters following Mr Buchanan.
Ross Perot is still blamed by Republicans for splitting their vote when he ran against president Bush in 1992 and let Bill Clinton into the White House. George Bush jnr was helping to run his father's campaign and has bitter memories of his humiliation.
The in-fighting inside the Reform Party is a mini-election in itself.
The former wrestler Jesse Ventura has become the power broker in the party following his surprise election as governor of Minnesota but he opposes Pat Buchanan coming on board for next year's election, saying that his "pro-life" stance is not acceptable.
Governor Ventura is pushing the flamboyant New York property developer Donald Trump as the Reform Party candidate who would run on a strong pro-business, tax-cutting platform.
Ross Perot is staying in the background but is appalled that someone like Governor Ventura should be taking over the party he founded.
The conventional wisdom, for what it is worth, is that this time next year Mr Gore and Governor Bush will be fighting it out while the Reform Party candidate - it could even be Mr Perot or Governor Ventura - scoops up the votes of those who are turned off by the money-dominated two-party system.
The primaries next year are so bunched together in the first three months that candidates need huge amounts of money for TV ads. There is no way for example they can personally canvass for votes in all the nine states which are holding primaries on March 7th, including the big ones of California and New York. By the end of that day, Al Gore could be facing humiliation at the hands of Bill Bradley or he could have seen the former senator off and go on to wrap up the nomination with his domination of the southern states.
George Bush could be cruising to a crushing victory over his Republican rivals while Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Ventura and Donald Trump could be squabbling over who will be the Reform Party candidate.
Maybe, by then, Mr Trump will have stopped being a "clean hands freak". As he puts it: "To me the only good thing about the act of shaking hands prior to eating is that I tend to eat less."
He doesn't mind kissing babies, however, or beautiful women, and he wants Oprah Winfrey as his vice-president.