THE BELL CURVE:

3:58 p.m. on Super Tuesday in Newport Beach, Calif., USA.

I’m settled in my reclining chair, yellow legal pad in my lap, pen to take notes at the ready, pretzels at hand, energy and expectations high, and the Super Bowl a dim memory overshadowed by the emotional electricity of Super Tuesday.

I haven’t seen such election excitement in many years — and a primary yet. A real, honest-to-God horse-race primary that tells me the American people are ready, finally, to participate in their own government.

I voted an hour ago and have been in my chair ever since, listening to CNN’s talking heads and wondering whether I should have taken a nap against what promises to be a long night.

Then I hear “two minutes to Georgia” and the first state to report has Barack Obama in the lead for the Democrats, and a tight three-way race for the Republicans when an acerbic former governor from Arkansas inserts himself unexpectedly in the high rollers, and I know we’re off and running.

The gates are open, and a half-dozen Eastern states where the polls close at 8 p.m. check in and a pattern emerges.

A dead heat between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and a pulling away by John McCain from two obstinate opponents for the Republicans. And sidelights you only pick up if you are in for the whole ride. Like Obama getting 88% of Georgia’s African-American vote. Or most of the field reporters for CNN being women and most of the studio couch potatoes, men.

6 p.m.: More trends appear. Anti-Bush sentiment growing among voters, a cornucopia of young citizens becoming players, a sense of change very much in the air, Mike Huckabee refusing to disappear, Mitt Romney striving not to.

A terribly destructive tornado sweeping through the southwest cuts into the election news. Life and death go on while the votes are counted. The contestants pull away in their home states. No upsets. Just trade-offs. The Democrats win big, the Republican winners — mostly McCain — squeak by.

7 p.m.: I substitute gin-and-vermouth for the Coke I’ve been drinking with my pretzels. My daughter phones from Denver. She is just home from taking part in a Colorado caucus that went big for Obama.

She‘s excited, and I think maybe I did something right in raising her. And I remember that same juice being squeezed out of my other daughter many years ago when she was one of a group of young people waiting for Bobby Kennedy to speak to them one violent evening at a hotel in Los Angeles.

California returns are only an hour away, so I take time off to gulp some dinner, leaving Missouri — which the talking heads describe as a critical state — hung up in tight races for both parties.

My stepson calls from Los Angeles while I’m eating. He’s at the polls and wants to know how I voted for president. When I tell him, he says that isn’t his choice, so I wonder why he called, but I’m pleased at his involvement. The kids are surfacing tonight.

8 p.m.: California pours in. The exit polls suggested a tight race between Clinton and Obama, but the early returns are all Clinton. We are now down to California and a handful of earlier states — especially Missouri — where the races are so close they can’t be called. So I surf looking for word on “Measure B.” I finally find it running beneath local news on Channel 9. “B” is winning, but returns are early, and I never find it again.

9:25 p.m.: CNN projects Clinton as winner of the California Democratic primary and McCain the Republican winner. Because delegates are pro-rated in California, the actual result has to await a full count. I’m tired but still curious.

We’re cutting to the tornado devastation more often now, but I hang in to see how the talking heads view the events of this election night. Generally there is awe at the national and international interest at this stage of the process and the near dead heat of Clinton and Obama. Most agree with the sentiments of one commentator, not identified in my notes, who said: “I’ve never before seen the likes of this kind of talent squaring off in the primary — especially with two front runners who simply couldn’t put it away.”

That’s because they haven’t lived as long as those of us who have, indeed, seen the likes of it more than once.

There was a time when most presidential run-ups took place at the convention, and we watched the vote swapping and maneuvering, and back room trade-offs in search of a viable compromise candidate.

For the first time in many years, that’s how this one might come down — and it carries some risk. Like Warren Gamaliel Harding who was chosen that way.

I fall asleep in my chair sometime about midnight thinking about Harding, who may well have been our worst president.

The California vote is still out and there is no further news about “B.”

I expect more such sleepless nights in the critical primaries to come.

And more welcome signs of public engagement in this flawed but engrossing system.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.