How history will judge 2016

On Nov. 8, the U.S. will conduct its 58th presidential election since the adoption of the Constitution. It's part of a sequence that goes back some 227 years, a longer period of continuous representative government than in almost any other nation.

Yet at the same time, the American experience with presidential elections has been limited. Three of those 58 elections were uncontested: George Washington in 1789 and 1792 and James Monroe had no opposition, with one electoral vote cast against Monroe so that Washington would be the only president unanimously elected.

Another seven early presidential elections, from 1796-1824, were conducted under rules so different from today's as to make comparisons exiguous.

That leaves the number of comparable presidential elections less than 50, a sample size so small most pollsters don't consider it statistically meaningful. And it's only the 12th presidential election, starting with 1972, in which the major parties' nominations have been determined largely in primary elections.

So perhaps it should not have been so surprising that one political rule of thumb after another has proved inoperative during the 2016 election cycle. Those supposedly ineluctable rules have been based on a small number of events.