We have no patience.

Our culture wants instant brilliance and immediate perfection; learning curves are no longer tolerated. People who stumble in their professional lives have no time to try to right themselves before the public starts demanding apologies, suspensions, heads on a platter. We no longer wait for the final curtain before critiquing a performance. Winners are projected — and losers scolded — before a single competitor has crossed the finish line. Things have gotten so bad that people get annoyed now when someone lagging behind refuses to give up.

Mike Huckabee participated in a self-deprecating "Saturday Night Live" skit recently about continuing his presidential campaign long after it had become virtually impossible for him to win the Republican nomination. He was stubbornly sticking with an exercise in futility, the pundits said. But in a fundamental, teach-a-kid-a-lesson way, Huckabee's refusal to suspend his campaign — until John McCain had officially won enough delegates to secure the nomination — was admirable.

Once McCain reached the magic number of 1,191 delegates last Tuesday night, Huckabee conceded. Surely there's satisfaction in knowing that you've pursued a goal with your best effort, that you've seen it through to the end. That ought to be met with congratulations, not exasperation.

And yet, our patience has been tried by this presidential campaign. We can barely wait for the polls to close, let alone sit still while the votes are being counted. People have been screaming for Hillary Clinton to pull out of the race — forget Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania and the convention and the superdelegates.

But what's the rush? Why can't the candidates make their case as many times and in as many venues as they'd like? They're only competing for the most important job in the world.

If watching the presidential race slowly unfold leaves us antsy, then waiting for the little stuff to rise or fall practically makes us jump out of our skin. Film executives want movies to rack up blockbuster revenues on opening weekend. If films don't have immediate success, they quickly disappear from the comfortable multiplexes with the stadium seating into some dank single-screen theater with a pole in the middle of the auditorium. Better just to wait for the DVD. Television shows are pulled if they don't attract an audience within the blink of an eye. (The suits seem to have forgotten that it took "Seinfeld" some four seasons to become a ratings success.)

It would be tempting to explain our impatience by invoking the old saw that our lives have gotten so crowded that a million different things are competing for every second of our attention. Or that because we have developed a fast-cut, post-MTV attention span, we don't have the patience for long, drawn-out processes. Yet we're capable of spending hours futzing with our MySpace pages, downloading ringtones, posting our photos online and text-messaging our friends. Our attention is limited only when we are not the central focus.

We're not impatient because we've got so much on our to-do lists. We're impatient because we've become more cynical, more self-absorbed, greedier.

The result is that we no longer seem to put any credence in the importance of people being able to learn from their mistakes. Get it right the first time or get out. In the fashion industry, designer Lars Nilsson was sent packing from the Gianfranco Ferre brand before he could even present his first womenswear collection last month. The brand's owners didn't like the preliminary designs; certainly a great deal of money was at stake. But it takes time for a designer to get his bearings. And those who are patient sometimes reap tremendous benefits. Nicolas Ghesquiere didn't dazzle the fashion industry with his first collection for Balenciaga, but three or so years later, he was a star.

Perhaps reality TV deserves some of the blame for our waning patience? These shows filled with naughty Omarosas encourage viewers to think that fame and fortune can be won in 13 episodes or fewer. We watch as business proposals and couture gowns are whipped up in 60 minutes — including commercial breaks. In the search for "America's Next Top Model," America's next great designer or an "American Idol," our fickle and impatient nature is rewarded with a limitless selection of wannabes who are dismissed by judges and voters with the air of a queen sending a jester on his way.

Slouched into our sofas, we're entertained by success and failure. But we have little patience for the lengthy — and occasionally enlightening — process by which either is reached.