SUPER TUESDAY – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  Today is Super Tuesday, the first primary in which a number of states vote on the same day.  Most of those states will be in the South.  More states vote next Tuesday, and still more the Tuesday after that.  Within two weeks we should get a clear view of where the races in both parties are going.

That is, if any clear view is possible in a year in which the Democratic frontrunner faces an FBI probe into very serious alleged infractions, and the Republican frontrunner isn't a Republican and has given generously to liberal causes in the past. 

What a system we've built. 

But wait.  Let's put things into perspective.  We've been here before.  Well, almost here.  We didn't have a 24-hour cable news cycle to report every sneeze of every potential president.  But...

In 1948 the Democratic Party broke apart.  Its Southern wing walked out of its national convention, and former Democrat Strom Thurmond ran against President Harry S. Truman, leading pundits to believe that Truman had no chance with the usual "solid South" of Democrats missing in action.  (Oh, the left wing also walked out a la Bernie Sanders.  Former Vice President Henry Wallace, a so-called "progressive," also ran against Truman, who'd replaced him as vice president in 1945, with Truman then becoming president upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death.)  Despite ridiculous odds, Truman won the election.

In 1952 the GOP was tearing itself to pieces.  The traditional Taft wing, still neo-isolationist, was battling the Eastern establishment wing, accusing it of leading the party to presidential defeat in both 1944 and 1948, under the banner of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey.  But that year a true knight entered the picture.  His name wasn't Trump.  It was Dwight Eisenhower, the architect of victory in World War II in Europe.  In many ways, Eisenhower, whose party affiliation was vague at best, saved the Republican Party from itself by winning two presidential elections in a row.

In 1964 the country was in political depression.  President Kennedy had been assassinated the year before, replaced by Lyndon B. Johnson, a vastly capable legislator, but a Texan despised by the elitist wing of his own party.  And the GOP nominated one Barry Goldwater, who even many Republicans regarded as too right-wing for the country's good.  Americans by the millions held their collective noses and voted Johnson in with landslide numbers.

In 1968 the Democrats faced revolt again.  The anti-Johnson forces rose up against the Vietnam War and against a president who didn't speak the way they did and hadn't gone to the right college.  In that year both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were murdered.  And the Democratic convention in Chicago was beset by street violence outside the hall.  Richard Nixon, a political has-been, and loathed by much of the electorate, squeaked through to presidential victory in November over Hubert Humphrey, who was Johnson's vice president.   

In 1972 the Dems were in full collapse, nominating the clueless George McGovern, who wasn't allowed to accept his nomination until 3 a.m. because the self-important conventioneers, their hall filled with the aroma of marijuana, had to let representatives of every aggrieved group in the universe have their say.  Even Richard Nixon, obnoxious to be sure, won the election in a landslide, only to be destroyed by Watergate two years later. 

In 1976, incumbent President Gerald Ford, who'd become president upon Nixon's forced resignation, was challenged for the presidential nomination by "warmed over movie actor" Ronald Reagan, former governor of California.  The party was stunned by Reagan's audacity, and rejected him, but not by much.  Ford lost the presidency to the pathetic Jimmy Carter.

In 1980, it was Reagan's turn.  Clearly the popular favorite within the party, he was despised by the Republican establishment, which feared he might actually do something as president.  They tried to force former President Gerald Ford on him as vice president, advertising the proposed ticket as a co-presidency, wherein Ford would be the reasonable go-along guy and Reagan would be the nutbag who'd be restrained.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Reagan went on to become a great president.

In 1992, professional sleaze Bill Clinton became president because a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, entered the race and took votes from President George H.W. Bush.  Perot, whose personality made Dick Nixon seem almost lovely, has since faded from politics.

And in 2000 we didn't even know who'd won the presidency until weeks after the election, when the result in the state of Florida became known.  Dems, backing Al Gore, were outraged when George W. Bush was declared the winner by about 500 votes.  They never forgave Bush for winning.  They never blamed Gore for losing his own home state of Tennessee.

And in 2008, the Democrats rejected the corrupt but experienced Hillary Clinton and nominated one of the most grossly underqualified candidates ever to run for president, the minor senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., a man whose resumé fit on the head of a pin.  He won the election and, from what I see in the papers, is still president.

Oh yes, we've had plenty of tumult in presidential politics over the years.  The country has survived.  And yes, this year does feel different, more desperate, more lacking in substance on the presidential level. 

But never underestimate the ability of the American people to snap back and set their country right.  Despair often leads to invention and ingenuity.

March 1,  2016