But in the 20th century, we like to believe, the presidency emerged as a potent, dynamic and creative force. Theodore Roosevelt was the first great incarnation of the 20th-century dream of a “modern” presidency. No one was more aware of that than TR himself, who once boasted of how he had succeeded in launching construction of the Panama Canal: “If I had followed traditional conservative methods I would have submitted a dignified State paper of probably 200 pages to Congress and the debates on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on the Canal does also.”

The dynamic presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan reinforced TR’s assumption that the presidency was now a commanding office whose occupant was capable of doing great deeds and charting new courses. Scholars of the presidency, most eminently Richard Neustadt, strengthened this idea further, writing brilliantly of how important it was for a president to find ways to lead boldly and progressively.

One reason the present imbroglio seems so menacing is that it appears to threaten a return to the dark days of Gilded Age stalemate. Yet if we look back carefully over the history of our 20th-century leaders, the image of the great progressive presidency begins to seem less a model and a norm than a striking aberration. Twentieth-century presidents have been more important, to be sure, than most of their 19th-century counterparts, largely because the federal government has been more important in our time than it was in theirs. Cold-war presidents, in particular, enjoyed enormous latitude in foreign policy. But on the whole, the 20th-century presidency has been less different from the Gilded Age one than we might like to believe.

How often have we seen the presidency acting in a way that would, in fact, fit the progressive ideal of a bold, activist, successful chief executive? Woodrow Wilson was a dynamic and effective leader for about two years at the beginning of his first term. Franklin Roosevelt had two brilliantly successful years (1933 and 1935) in his first term as well. LBJ achieved extraordinary things in 1965 and 1966, and Ronald Reagan did so (even if not in the way progressives might have liked) in 1981. That’s about seven years in the last hundred. Almost all of them coincided with some combination of random and unpredictable events that seemed to demand dramatic presidential power: economic or international crisis, the clamor of great social movements, the powerful emotions following a popular leader’s death and other exceptional factors. During most of the other 93 years, the 20th-century presidents were either cautious and fairly unadventurous men (Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Ford and Bush), or ambitious leaders largely stalemated by Congress, by popular opposition to their plans, by social and economic difficulties that undermined their leadership, or by their own incapacities or misdeeds (think of Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and to some degree Clinton; and think as well of Wilson, the two Roosevelts, Johnson and Reagan during all but a few years of their terms).

What does this mean for the next leader of the free world? Unquestionably the ferocity and bitterness of the present dispute has the capacity to create a presidency far more stymied and ineffectual than the norm. As long as the supporters of either side emerge from this contest believing that their candidate was cheated out of the presidency, the prospects for any partisan magnanimity and cooperation will be slim. But suppose the two campaigns somehow manage to cobble together a compromise that convinces both sides the result is fair. Or suppose this close election had been decided cleanly and relatively uncontroversially in the first place. How much more could we expect of a new president then?

Certainly not a great presidency of the sort that in the past has emerged only out of extraordinary circumstances. There is no electoral mandate, no reliable congressional majority for either party, no social or economic crisis demanding dramatic solution, no powerful popular movements demanding action. This means we can expect something closer to the norm of presidential power in this century: modest and usually inconclusive struggle against formidable odds. Individual leaders cannot by themselves conjure up the circumstances that will make it possible for them to govern greatly. (“If Lincoln had lived in ordinary times,” TR once said, “no one would remember his name.”)

In shaping expectations of our leaders in more or less ordinary times, we should perhaps take more seriously what, under the progressive model, might seem the humdrum and quotidian activities of the presidency: a leader’s ability to choose subordinates and manage the bureaucracy; a president’s choices of nominees to federal courts; the incremental changes a chief executive might manage to maneuver through Congress or the executive agencies when large changes are not possible. The potential tragedy of this election is not that it will deprive us of a great presidency, but that it will make it very difficult for us even to have what in normal times is about the best we can hope for: a modestly good one.