TUESDAY IS THE FIRST DAY of the rest of our lives, which is about how long the 2008 presidential campaign promises to last. Super Tuesday's primary results will certainly be a more accurate indicator of who will become the next American president than those Groundhog Day elections in New Hampshire and Iowa, when the first winning candidates poke their heads above the snow causing the eager news media to predict the coming of spring in November. Even if the groundhog happens to be a Huckabee.

By Tuesday midnight we'll know if Barack has a shot at the title, if Hillary is more unpopular than imagined, if Mitt can catch on despite being too rich, too handsome and too Mormon and if Die Hard candidate John McCain can out-box office his name-alike movie hero in this primary sequel. Bnt no matter what, when the fog clears Wednesday morning, the elephant will still be standing in the living room crapping on the carpet.

America will still be trapped in a foreign war we never should have started in a country we never should have invaded for reasons the proved to be a pack of lies. Not only did we not impeach the liar directly responsible, we reelected him. And instead of shaking an outraged fist at the White House, Democrats argue over which candidate came out against the war last, while Republicans argue over who spoke words that might comfort an enemy that didn't exist until we blew up their country.

And you know what? I've seen it, heard it all before. "If we don't beat them there, we'll have to fight them here." For those of us of a certain age, Vietnam was the defining personal and political argument of our youth. Vietnam posed all the right answers that started with the wrong question: which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?

Of course, American boys died by the boxcar load in 1968 -- more than four times as many as have died in Iraq in five years of war. There was a presidential election that year and Americans chose the candidate proclaiming to have a "secret plan" to end the war. His name was Richard Nixon. For the record, we lost the war in Vietnam in 1975, three years after Nixon was reelected , and a year after he resigned.

As for the inevitable Vietnamese Communist threat to America, I offer this anecdote: about a year after 9/11 I bought a baseball hat from a street vendor. It said NYFD on the cap and inside on the tag it said "Product of Vietnam."

Who said irony is dead?