Speculating on the winner of today’s presidential election is something I can’t do with any degree of accuracy, but here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: Nine months from now, the bestseller lists will bear little resemblance to those published on October 31.

This protracted and extraordinarily vitriolic campaign, which essentially began after the 2002 midterm elections, has worn out voters, regardless of their political preference. The vast majority will be relieved when it’s over. That’s not the case for book publishers – and to a lesser degree the entire communications industry – as they’ve reaped a jackpot from titles directly related to today’s highly partisan environment.

The New York Times’s recent tally of nonfiction bestsellers included seven political books in its top 10: Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book)”; Ann Coulter’s “How To Talk to a Liberal”; George Carlin’s “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops”; John O’Neill’s “Unfit for Command”; Richard Miniter’s “Shadow War”; Michael Moore’s “Will They Ever Trust Us Again”; and Kitty Kelley’s “The Family,” a gossip-strewn account of the Bush clan. (The other three are Bob Dylan’s clever “Chronicles,” Tatum O’Neal’s “A Paper Life,” and Augusten Burroughs’s “Magical Thinking.”)

Here’s the list for October 27, 2002: Rudolph Giuliani’s “Leadership”; Lisa Beamer’s “Let’s Roll!”; Thomas L. Friedman’s “Longitudes and Attitudes”; Bruce Feiler’s “Abraham”; Tom Shales’s “Live from New York”; Arthur Levitt’s “Take on the Street”; Jane Leavy’s “Sandy Koufax”; Richard Preston’s “The Demon in the Freezer”; Bill Sammon’s “Fighting Back”; and Tony Horwitz’s “Blue Latitudes.”

In that group, there are two September 11 books, two books on terrorism and the Middle East, and a couple of books by prominent figures on the list. But the Top 10 is devoid of ad hominem attacks, and there were even a couple books I wanted to read. (Ms. Leavy’s biography of pitching great Koufax was a delight, as was Mr. Shales’s history of “Saturday Night Live.”)

The same political climate has been evident at the cineplex as well. Enough has been written about Mr. Moore’s duplicitous and enormously profitable “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but that wasn’t the only film that cast aspersions on Mr. Bush’s first term in office. “The Day After Tomorrow,” a summer box-office success, was a thinly veiled attack on the administration’s environmental policies. A remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” with a villain who looked like Dick Cheney, barely disguised its contention that Halliburton is responsible for turmoil in the world.

“Team America,” the vulgar and hilarious spoof by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was more even-handed, giving a pox-on-both-houses treatment of today’s political scene. Hollywood celebrities are lampooned, as is the French government. Yet the pair also tweaks Americans who are rabidly gung-ho about the Iraq invasion.

In addition, films like the risible “Outfoxed,” a documentary that vastly inflates the power of Fox News (it’s no wonder Rupert Murdoch’s cable station draws such high ratings: its critics can’t stop giving it free publicity) appeared at art houses throughout the country, thus crowding out more worthy, and less politically-motivated fare. John Sayles’s “Silver City,” a fictional movie about a sleazy politician who bears resemblance to President Bush, was created to preach to the converted.

Surveying the vast number of political books released in the past year – many of which I’ve reviewed in these pages – it’s striking how poor the quality was. This year seemingly every writer with a point of view tried to cash in on a lucrative market. Many – like Dick Morris’s second book in a single year condemning the Clintons, “Because I Could,” and Senator Byrd’s “Losing America” – I simply dismissed. But a few were particularly disappointing.

In any other year, I’d have looked forward to new books by James Wolcott, John Powers, or Graydon Carter. But this year – like everybody else – they decided to weigh in on politics instead of topics they were more equipped to address. An autobiography from Mr. Carter, one of this country’s most notable magazine editors in the past generation, might’ve been fascinating. And I think a book about the rising influence of Web logs on popular culture by Mr. Wolcott could have been a seminal examination of the “new media” phenomenon.

Instead, Mr. Wolcott’s “Attack Poodles” was a vicious screed about the allegedly conservative media. Mr. Wolcott, a veteran journalist who’s written with wit and insight for publications ranging from the Village Voice to Vanity Fair, was so consumed with his hatred not only for Mr. Bush but also for his perceived conservative lapdogs that “Attack Poodles” suffers from a relentless torrent of purple prose. Mr. Wolcott explained in his introduction to “Attack Poodles” that he’s happily contributed to both liberal and conservative venues in the past, mostly about pop culture, and until recently wasn’t overly concerned with partisan politics. But like so many other writers, he contracted the anti-Bush virus.

Mr. Wolcott wrote: “I wasn’t looking for a cause. But I can’t bear bullies, and I can’t stand cowardly deceivers; and in the Bush administration and the conservative media, we have the worst of both combined.” Mr. Wolcott excoriates Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News – once again, the predictable go-to target – but also, fairly incredibly, accuses several New York Times reporters of being in the tank for Mr. Bush. The best that can be said about Mr. Wolcott’s book is that he resisted the urge, unlike so many of his compatriots, to compare Mr. Bush to Hitler or Stalin.

Another writer I’ve long admired, the film critic Mr. Powers, also became a political pundit – like so many Hollywood actors and pop music stars – regularly attacking Mr. Bush in the LA Weekly and culminating in his hysterical book “Sore Winners.” Mr. Powers, apparently ignoring the well-documented bias against Mr. Bush by the mainstream media, said: “If you wonder why so many people wrote books calling Bush a liar, it’s partly because big media, especially television, proved so lax about scrutinizing the Orwellian abyss between the administration’s rhetoric and what it was actually doing.”

I wonder if it’s possible for any Bush-basher to complete an essay or book without invoking George Orwell.

Mr. Powers completed his book before Dan Rather’s CBS meltdown on Mr. Bush’s National Guard records, or the New York Times’s dash to influence the election by printing inconclusive reports about missing weapons in Iraq. But only a zealot blind with fury could honestly say that “big media” is uncritical of the current administration.

Finally, Mr. Wolcott’s editor at Vanity Fair, Mr. Carter, until recently publicly detached from politics, rushed out an abysmal book, “What We’ve Lost.” So apocalyptic was this in its depiction of the president one might come to the conclusion that it was ghostwritten by Mr. Moore. Mr. Carter, on the eve of the election, appeared calmer, as in his appearance with journalist John Leo on Lou Dobbs’s CNN show on October 28. He declined to predict the outcome of the race, and expressed hope it wouldn’t be a repeat of 2000.

That sober assessment is a far cry from his conclusion to “What We’ve Lost,” when he wrote: “America’s reputation for strength and justice, which has taken more than two centuries to establish, has been rent asunder by a single administration.”

So where do we go now? Inevitably, starting as early as January, dozens of books about the 2004 campaign, mostly written by journalists who’ve spent over a year on the road with various candidates, will be released. But it’s improbable more than one or two will catch on with the public. In the event of a Kerry presidency, there will be a lag before disaffected members of his administration come out with “tell-all” tomes; if President Bush is re-elected, a number of angry screeds by left-wing writers will stock the shelves for a while. But after the sheer exhaustion of the past several years, I wonder how many readers will buy yet another volume that vilifies Mr. Bush.

By the summer of next year, I expect the usual mix of books to top the charts again. And this bizarre “perfect storm” (to use a cliche common this year), by which politics came to dominate movies and publishing for the entire campaign, may occur again in three years, but I doubt it. After this contentious period, most Americans will welcome a breather from politics. Let’s hope Messrs. Wolcott, Carter, and Powers are among them.