We've only been doing these things by mostly primary for what, the last 60 or so years? Say what you want about party bosses choosing candidates from smoke filled rooms, but the world would have looked a lot different had Henry Wallace been president in 1945. And few truly joke nominees came before we mostly went to primaries. I guess we can look back and later realize Harding was a fraud, and maybe William Jennings Bryan was a religious nut. But that's about it. Since the primary system, you could say 1964 was volatile for the Pubs and 1968 for the Dems, and both lost, but neither Goldwater nor Humphrey were jokes. Nixon was a paranoid alcoholic, but he had a great resume and won twice easily. Neither Mondale nor Dukakis were good candidates but both were effective in prior incarnations. Gary Hart might have saved us from Dukakis, but he challenged the press to follow him around. Oops. Quayle was an idiot, but Bush the Elder had a fantastic resume. W was seen as a lightweight, but he didn't seem like the idealogue his presidency became in 2000. Palin truly was a joke, but 2008 otherwise was not.
So to summarize, no. Nothing close to this clownshow. Two fundamentally dishonest and hated nominees, and the other serious contenders running were also clowns - Cruz, Sanders, Jeb!, Sleepy, Frothy.... As to why we ended up with this clownshow, the Dem side is easier to explain. They had other plausible candidates who were not universally hated, but they all stood on the sideline out of respect and/or fear of the Clintons. Pubs are more difficult to explain. It think it's that the tea bagging and religious right fringe really controls the party at the grass roots level and make it impossible for a reasonable moderate like Huntsman to gain any traction, and so you end up with a bunch of different fringe candidates. The only normal establishment type this time around was Jeb!, and he ran an awful campaign. Romney would have been such a normal establishment type last time had he run on his record and not completely remade himself to make himself tolerable to the GOP electorate. The GOP issue is more systemic, whereas the Dem issue will go away when the Clintons die.
