Unless something really earth-shaking happens (like that “no-election” scenario being peddled by those scared to death of the appointment of Norberto Gonzales as defense secretary), it looks like the fight is finally going to happen. Now, as Michael Buffer would probably say, let’s get ready to campaign!

The announcement that Loren Legarda has been chosen to be the running mate of Manny Villar completes the expected four-way constest of two-man teams that now includes a man-woman tandem in Villar-Legarda. The other three steams completed earlier are those of Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas, Joseph Estrada and Jojo Binay and Gilbert Teodoro and Edu Manzano.

Of course, there are also those who still say that they are in the fight, like Bayani Fernando, Eddie Villanueva, Hermogenes Ebdane and others. But while it’s true that these supposed candidates haven’t backed out, they have at this point about as much chance of winning as the so-called “small players” in the petroleum industry have of influencing the market through prices at the pump.

The presidential field so far hasn’t been this crowded since 1992, when Fidel Ramos beat heavyweights Danding Cojuangco, Miriam Defensor Santiago, Ramon Mitra and Imelda Marcos by the slimmest of margins, thereby becoming the Philippines’ first true minority president. Prior to that, electoral contests for Malacañang Palace were mostly mano-a-mano affairs between two major candidates, a trend that continued after ‘92 when a heavy favorite ran off with the big prize (Erap in ‘98) and two fancied bets faced off (GMA-FPJ in ’04, with Panfilo Lacson as the wild card).

If the elections next year were an actual prize fight in Las Vegas, the current odds would favor Aquino-Roxas. If we use the latest Pulse Asia survey as a basis for odds-making, the other seedings would then follow in this order: Villar-Legarda, Estrada-Binay and, taking up the rear, Teodoro-Manzano.

Those who believe that the elections next May won’t be anywhere as close as the one in 1992 should be cautioned that this assumption is based on this week’s Pulse poll, which clearly shows a narrowing of the gap between the current frontrunner (Aquino) and his rivals. Indeed, where Ninoy and Cory’s son once held a commanding 60 percent lead, he now has a less-insurmountable 44 percent —Teodoro, on the other hand, is now the choice of two percent, liberating him from the dreaded One Percent and Below division populated by Fernando et al.

Admittedly, Aquino’s stratospheric 60 percent was tracked in a poll by another survey company that had a mind-boggling total of almost 130 percent respondents making their picks with absolutely no “undecideds,” the result of that outfit’s strange and outrageous “pick three bets” questioning strategy. So it could actually be the case that the rankings in the latest survey have been prevailing for some time, had a more comprehensible poll-taking method like Pulse Asia’s been used instead of the horribly skewed method preferred by Social Weather Stations.

Of course, one of the two-man teams in the race still has an asterisk after its name to denote its conditional inclusion. A Supreme Court ruling equivalent to the “acts of God” clause in automotive insurance policies could cause the Erap-Binay team to be scratched even before the voting starts—if that happens, the Makati mayor will have to choose between withdrawing as well or going it alone as a vice presidential candidate without a standard-bearer.

It’s telling that all four major tandems publicly profess to like their chances, whatever their position in the surveys. That means they’re dead serious about going the distance and that they’re going to work hard to either consolidate their gains or move up some more.

As Estrada said, most people (regardless of SWS’ polling methods) still haven’t decided and there’s still a lot of time left on the clock. Heck, the bell to start the fight—the deadline for the filing of candidates’ certificates—hasn’t even been rung yet.

But at least the teams have been more or less defined. Now it’s up to us, the voters, to pick those that we believe can truly help guide this country forward for the next six years.

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By month’s end, the campaigning will start in earnest. Pretty soon, we will be bombarded with the usual and unusual methods that are already being finalized in political “war rooms” all over the country to get us to vote one way or the other.

A newfangled computerized voting system that is being bandied about to be a lot faster that the old manual way (even if it can’t seem to be delivered for testing in time) and with no “equity of the incumbent” on the presidential level in play, there are more question marks than usual this time around. Others point to this election as the first where so-called “new media” will play a large role, even if access to the Internet and household computer ownership is still a serious handicap to that coming to pass.

It is significant that the head of the Pulse Asia survey organization notes that media will once again play a pivotal role in the selection process that ends when the winner is proclaimed in the middle of next year. In an interview with ABS-CBN’s Ted Failon, Pulse Asia Chairman Felipe Miranda said that seven out of 10 persons they polled said they took their cue from media when choosing their favored candidates.

Before we in the news business get all self-important because of this factoid, it should pointed out that Miranda uses “media” in the broadest sense of the word, to include advertising in the form of political ads, probably together with billboards, movies made “in aid of election” and the like. People do pay attention to the news and the commentaries, Miranda said, but probably not as much as they do to advertising paid for by the candidates themselves.

With the current liberalized policy on campaign advertising that now prevails, it would not be surprising if the candidate who buys up the most advertising airtime could round up the biggest number of votes. Or at least, heavy advertising could convince more of those who haven’t decided yet to get off the fence and decide one way or the other.

Miranda is also of the opinion that the media, taken as a whole, is probably more persuasive that the churches and other institutions in getting people to vote. This could mean either that these other institutions have taken on a reduced role in the individual decision-making process on election because they are no longer credible or that the pervasiveness of media has relegated other traditional aids to that process to a minority.

For the candidates, this makes campaigning a very expensive proposition indeed, especially because television— by far the most influential medium of them all—is also the costliest to put an ad in. Thus, it could happen that the next president would get elected on the basis of the number and effectivity of his advertising, something that favors those whose campaign coffers are better endowed.

In a perfect world, of course, this definitely shouldn’t be the case. What we’d like to see is not the slick, expensive or endorsement-heavy ads of a candidate but his platform and program of government, his track record, his trustworthiness and all the other intangibles that don’t have anything to do with “branding” and “image.”

As we prepare for the flood of advertising from all manner of candidates on every level of elected government, let’s remember that advertising isn’t always a good measure of the product. More often than not, as every consumer knows, it’s just hype—and buyer beware.