The presidential campaign is getting serious, people. Just four months to the Iowa caucuses! You’re supposed to be concerned citizens, and your friends are going to expect you to update them regularly. If you can’t, be prepared to take an active part in discussions about the Tom Brady divorce rumors.

Today, the Republicans. Things we learned this summer about Jeb Bush:

■ His first name is actually John. And there is certainly nothing wrong with “John Bush,” except that it sounds like something on a fake ID card.

■ He seems wounded that Donald Trump keeps saying he’s boring. At one Republican meeting he promised to “unleash the American animal spirits.”

■ He’s come up with a way to criticize George W. without mentioning Iraq. “He should have brought the hammer down on the Republicans when they were spending way too much,” he told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show.” This presumably refers to a new entitlement . much hated by fiscal conservatives . that extended Medicare coverage to prescription drugs. Do you think John Bush is going to campaign on repealing it? As a political tactic it’s about as promising as Chris Christie’s idea that he could reboot his campaign by vowing to cut back on Social Security.

Ben Carson has been surging! It’s easy to understand his popularity. He has a compelling life story about raising himself up from poverty to become a brain surgeon, and he was the least needy-looking candidate in the first Republican debate. On the other side, it is kind of unnerving that he doesn’t believe in evolution. Most Republican candidates try to fudge that one, by changing the subject or saying something like “I am not a scientist.” But Carson really doesn’t believe in evolution. And he is, you know, a scientist.

On Wednesday Donald Trump assured a rally in Washington that his experience in marketing luxury real estate would make him a brilliant international diplomat. Meanwhile, a forthcoming biography reveals that Trump, who energetically avoided the Vietnam draft, “felt that I was in the military in the true sense” because his parents once sent him to a military boarding school. Coming soon: Trump explains that he understands the suffering of the Syrian refugees because of his experience firing people on reality TV.

Carly Fiorina is another outsider, running on her career as a C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 corporation. It is true that she was fired after a disastrous performance, but nobody’s perfect. Fiorina was the star of the backup debate in August, besting nationally known figures like Jim Gilmore, the former governor of … a state. Her performance was so outstanding that she is set to be promoted to the top-dog debate next week. But nobody is being demoted! Obviously CNN understands that what the nation really needs this September is an 11-person argument.

Pop Quiz: Who should CNN throw out to make room for Carly Fiorina?

A) Mike Huckabee . the evangelical vote has gone to Ben Carson, and John Kasich has taken over the conservative-with-a-heart thing Huckabee used to do until he discovered having a heart wasn’t actually all that popular.

B) The libertarian who doesn’t believe in reproductive rights.

C) Pick a random person you find irritating, like William Shatner or Tom Cruise. We’re just pretending anyway.

Speaking of ebb and flow, what ever happened to Marco Rubio? He’s completely vanished! The high point of his summer was when he hit a kid in the head with a football.

Actually, there are worse strategies. Scott Walker keeps showing up and it’s always terrible. Asked about the Syrian refugee crisis, the governor of Wisconsin said, “Everybody wants to talk about hypotheticals; there is no such thing as a hypothetical.”

Chris Christie is under the shadow of a new political corruption investigation, this one about whether United Airlines ran a money-losing flight from the Newark airport to South Carolina just so the guy Christie put in charge of the Port Authority could get to his vacation home. This follows the investigation into aides’ causing traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge and the flap over the governor’s free private plane rides to football games. The one great thing about Christie is that his scandals almost always involve our national yearning for seamless transportation.

Ted Cruz adopted a strange summer strategy of joining himself at the hip with Donald Trump, thus guaranteeing that no one would ever notice anything he said or did. Meanwhile Mike Huckabee totally elbowed him out of the frame when Cruz tried to welcome the anti-gay marriage county clerk from jail. He is hoping to make a comeback this month by bringing the government to a halt over the federal budget. It’s been a time-honored campaign tactic ever since the days of President Newt Gingrich.