The 44th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office carries an odd poignancy when you consider what is happening in real time — today!

On Aug. 9, 1974, President Nixon handed over his letter of resignation to the secretary of state, walked out of the White House and flew away aboard Marine One. His covering up of the Watergate scandal did him in.

Gerald R. Ford took the presidential oath of office and declared that “our long national nightmare is over.”

I fear we’ve entered into another tempest of nightmarish proportions.

No one knows how the investigation into Donald J. Trump’s difficulty is going to turn out. Special counsel Robert Mueller is deep into his probe of “the Russia thing” and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

The president is acting like a man in trouble. He keeps declaring Mueller’s probe to be a “rigged witch hunt.” Mueller, though, is keeping his head down, his shoulder to the wheel and has clamped down on his legal team to protect against any leaks.

His 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is on trial for money laundering. Mueller has indicted several other key aides to the president. He has obtained guilty pleas from some of them.

What we have on our hands, dear reader, is a monumental mess. The president refuses to keep his mouth shut while Mueller does his job, sounding for all the world as if he has something he doesn’t want revealed … whatever it is.

So it is with a certain sense of dread that we look back 44 years to when another president, Richard Nixon, was given the grim news from his fellow Republicans. It was that he didn’t have enough Senate support to acquit him if an impeachment went to trial. Then it fell to GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona to tell the president he had to quit.

The president followed Sen. Goldwater’s advice. President Ford reminded us that “our Constitution works.” Yes, it did then.

It will work again, no matter what happens with this president.