Presidential elections are box office. Just ask the cable news channels, which are attracting record audiences for the presidential debates, staged with the mandatory red, white and blue backdrops and rousing music, usually with a martial drumbeat, that would not sound out of place as the soundtrack for Top Gun.
On Facebook, the race was the most talked about subject globally in 2015.
With a new instalment every four years, presidential elections have not only become an exercise in the franchise, but an exercise in franchising.
The problem is that the greatest democratic show on earth also doubles as the most outlandish.
For international onlookers, it can seem freakish and bizarre: a long-running farce populated by cartoonish characters, which works as entertainment but is a poor advertisement for American democracy.
Though presidential elections easily satisfy most theatrical requirements, do they meet the needs of a well-functioning democracy?
Regardless of the cast, the process itself is easy to lampoon.
The race begins in Iowa and New Hampshire, two relatively small states that end up having a wholly disproportionate impact on the outcome.
There is an argument to be made that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire take very seriously their civic responsibility, and closely scrutinise each of the presidential candidates.
The electors there usefully winnow the field. But both states are 94% white, compared with the national figure of 77%, and could hardly be described as ethnically representative of the country as a whole. Quite the contrary.