This 24-7 vigil over Barack Obama’s running mate is starting to get on my nerves.

Obama and his campaign have executed a carefully contrived plan over the past two weeks to stoke the anticipation and expectation his pick is generating and maximize the attention the candidate and his campaign are getting.

But there is a point of diminishing returns: It’s a fine line between getting the most out of the situation and taunting the press and the public.

Dragging this out all week, and especially with his comments and demeanor yesterday, Obama has gotten dangerously close to the latter.

The press is giving Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who are believed to lead the pack, the paparazzi treatment. CNN has live feed pouring in from outside the homes of each of the prospects, they are staking out the Chicago-Midway airport—with a helicopter—and get this: They even followed Biden to the dentist yesterday.

Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez just made the point on CNN that this over-the-top treatment Obama’s decision is getting actually shouldn’t be a surprise; it’s right in line, she said, with the hanging-on-every-word treatment with which the press has covered Obama since Iowa.

His handling of this situation, dragging it out until the eve of the convention, reiterates and reinforces the Obama-centric feel of the whole campaign, she said; it certainly won’t help him overcome those criticisms that his ego is a bit too healthy for his own good.

Fox News’ Major Garrett said that there could be a more practical reason for Obama to string the announcement out until the very eve of the convention: It means he isn’t picking Hillary Clinton. By holding the announcement as long as possible, the Obama campaign hopes to blunt—or at least eclipse—the backlash it knows will come from disaffected (outraged?) Hillary supporters who believe Obama has a moral obligation to choose the only other candidate who drew 18 million votes in the primaries.

The hysteria around the announcement and the wall-to-wall media coverage of it, the newly introduced No. 2 and his (or her) personal story and political history will squeeze out and freeze out Hillary’s disappointed followers in their attempts to share their feelings on the airwaves, Garrett argued.

One more thing for the Obama campaign to consider as this moment-to-moment vigil drags on into the sixth day: The Obama campaign has promised to notify its supporters of the selection via text and e-mail message before it is announced to the media. The longer he waits to announce the pick, the closer he gets to that Springfield, Ill., rally tomorrow at which the pair will make its first joint appearance as the ticket. But the VP nominee is going to have to head to Springfield at some point, so the stakeout that’s going on with the assumed top-tier trio increases the chance that the press will figure out what’s going on.

And that means that Obama runs the risk, no matter how tightly he’s guarded the secret thus far, of the press delivering the message before he can.

Of course, the alternative is to have all three (or more) prospects arrive in Springfield. But then you have an entirely new problem: The massive egos of politicians don’t tyically lend themselves to being used this way. So gathering all the prospects in one place, telling all but one of them that they’ve been passed over and then expecting them to smile and not indicate any disappointment ...

... Well, that would be real change.