In 457 days, a year and three months, Americans will elect their 45th president. Before the balloons drop in someone’s hotel ballroom, dozens of debates, hundreds of ideas, thousands of speeches with millions of words, and billions of dollars will be deployed in the 2016 campaign. Thursday night in Cleveland, the first salvos of that race were fired when 17 Republican candidates, split into two brackets like a flighted golf tournament, began peppering each other with sound bites in televised debates.