Clinton Hillary Rodham - The year of voting dangerously: the derangement of American politics

When you have lived through extraordinary historywatching a president get impeached, covering father-son presidencies, chronicling a cooked-up war, seeing the wacky woman from Wasilla go rogue, savoring the election of the first black commander in chiefyou dont expect to be exponentially more astonished.

Indeed, you might find yourself becoming a jade, thinking youd seen it all.

But then America got madand went mad.

Donald Trump glided down that escalator and promised to build that wall and bragged about his manhood and dissed the Pope and politics vaulted past parody.

We are watching the most epic battle of the sexes since Billie Jean King faced off against Bobby Riggs. The former first lady and first woman ever to run for president as the nominee of a major party is going up against a thrice-married Rat Pack reality TV star who still calls women sweetheart and rates their racks.

What could go wrong?

On previous wild political rides, we were still operating within the usual boundaries and hoary traditions. Thats why McCain aides called it going rogue when Sarah Palin tried to dart away from typical campaign mores.

But 2016 is a dizzying dive through the looking glass and into Donald Trumps Narcissus pooland must-follow Twitter feed.

Its as though Trump blew up the science lab, exposing the raw nerve of Americas stream of consciousness, says Jon Meacham, the presidential historian.

The Republican Party, held hostage to the whims of its 70-year-old high-chair king, is imploding. The Democratic Party, held hostage to the Clintons bizarre predilection for arrogant and self-defeating behavior just when things are going well, had to stitch itself back together after its unexpected civil war.

Tectonic plates are grinding. Gatekeepers, old rules and old media are vanishing.

We have an out-of-control id taunting a tightly controlled superego. We have the king of winging it versus the queen of homework. She says hes too unpredictable to be president, he says shes too predictable. Trump can excite his crowds but falters on substance; Hillary has substance but falters on exciting her crowds. The boor versus the bore, Times Charlotte Alter call it.

Hes antipolitical correctness and shes always overcorrecting. He does the post-ideological shuffle and she does the whatever-it-takes-to-win slide. The Republican nominee trashes the press but constantly engages with us and the Democratic nominee praises the press but routinely hides from us. Oddly, the Trumpster, as he calls himself, at times sounds like more of a dove than the Warrior, as Hillarys friends call her.

We have two candidates with the highest unfavorables ever recorded and a majority of voters who feel stuck voting against, rather than for, someone. Both parties nominated the only person who could possibly lose to the other. Voters are agonizing about whether they can trust either candidate. Will Trump, who has scant impulse control and whos willing to say the most insulting, provocative things that people wouldnt say at a dinner party much less a global forum, get into a tweet battle with a madman and start a world war?

Will Hillary ever seem on the level? Or will she always be surrounded by a cordon of creepy henchmen and Clinton Inc. sycophants, shrouded in a miasma of money grabs and conveniently disappearing records and emails?

Both candidates have a Nixonian streak and a fluid relationship with the truth, and both love to play the victim. Trump whinges and sends out self-pitying tweets about how the press and fellow Republicans are being unfair to him and not giving him enough credit. Hillary always does best when shes up against a bunch of pasty-faced, hectoring white male Republicans determined to bring her downor just a sole taunting Tang-colored one.

The 2016 race quickly became the nastiest in modern history, vicious and salacious. You have to go all the way back to 1884 to find a choice between two candidates who had big liabilities the way Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do, says John Dickerson, the host of CBSs Face the Nation. Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock and James G. Blaine was dogged by a series of scandals in office. As Dickerson notes, Lord James Bryce wrote that the race became a contest over the copulative habits of one and the prevaricative habits of the other. And Blaine supporters chanted Ma, Ma, wheres my Pa? to which Clevelands supporters responded Gone to the White House. Ha, ha, ha!