A nice catch to presidency scholar Matthew Dickinson for a very nice takedown of a Chris Cillizza column that claimed: "Being president is the most powerful job in the world. At which you will almost certainly fail."
In particular, Dickinson addressed the assertion that the U.S. presidency is getting more difficult. He pointed to the reelections of three consecutive presidents as at least modest evidence that the presidency may be somewhat easier today than in the era of George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. (The latter two were not defeated, but were driven from office nonetheless.)
Dickinson found a prescient quote from the late presidential scholar Richard Neustadt about how, in the future, presidents (and, Dickinson, adds, pundits) "may look back on the Cold War as an era of stability, authority and glamour. They may yearn for the simplicity they see in retrospect, and also for the solace. Too bad."