Americans did the same thing a century ago. Then, as now, the nation was experiencing a fundamental change in the character of its economy, and the result was a profound set of social upheavals. Then, as now, there were great disparities of wealth, poverty and even despair, racial and ethnic tensions, and a widespread fear of crime and urban violence. Then, as now, many Americans became frustrated at the failure of their political institutions to respond adequately to the new challenges; they developed a contempt for and cynicism about their political leaders, and they looked for ways to remove politics from public life. And then, as now, politicians struggled for ways to restore their calling to public favor.

In his occasional wanderings into late-19th-century history during the campaign and since the election, President Clinton has wisely avoided comparing himself to the man who actually presided over the last turn of the century: William McKinley, the bland, stolid Ohio politician elected in 1896 and again in 1900. McKinley was a man widely viewed as a pliant vehicle for party bosses, with no clear vision and no significant agenda, a man his successor once described as having “no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.” Instead, Clinton has chosen to liken himself to a much more vivid historical figure: Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901 after McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt almost singlehandedly reinvigorated the American presidency and relegitimized public life, becoming a great leader in a time of peace, which is no small feat. (It usually takes a successful war to push a president into the first rank.) Clinton would like to do the same, but he will find it very difficult.

The similarities between our own century’s end and Theodore Roosevelt’s go only so far. Despite the anxiety and frustration with which many Americans viewed their plight 100 years ago, there was also then a prevailing confidence in, and even excitement about, the future. That kind of optimism about public matters seems conspicuously lacking in our own time. As the 20th century began, some people despaired about the nation’s problems, but many others expressed faith in society’s ability to master its fate and build a bold, successful new world. To those late-19th-century progressives, the expansion of scientific and technological knowledge, and (as they saw it) the expansion of human thought, opened up hitherto unimagined possibilities for social progress. “In every department of scientific and intellectual activity,” The Washington Post boasted in January 1900, “we have gone beyond the wildest dreams of 1800.” The nation would move forward, these ebullient optimists believed, united behind great common purposes, resolute in its search for the public good. A “titanic world” has “sprung up around us,” a now forgotten novelist wrote at the time. “We will go forward into a way of life… more consciously national than any we have ever known.” TR, to whom the pursuit of a great destiny (both for himself and for his country) was something close to an obsession, once said that all nations pass away but that the truly great ones leave behind “indelibly their impress on the centuries… I ask that this people rise level to the greatness of its opportunities. I don’t ask that it seek the easiest path.”

Such language is difficult to imagine in our own, constricted political time–when our boldest national goals seem to consist of imagining new ways to balance the budget, weaken the safety net, curb tobacco use and rate TV shows. Great national undertakings of the sort TR embraced are nowhere apparent today. President Clinton may try to evoke images of Roosevelt’s energy and vision, but his own tiny agenda–and the modest political opportunities available to him–suggests a much different model. “If during the lifetime of a generation,” Roosevelt once said, “no crisis occurs sufficient to call out in marked manner the energies of the strongest leader, then of course the world does not and cannot know of the existence of such a leader; and in consequence there are long periods in the history of every nation during which no man appears who leaves an indelible mark.” Roosevelt managed to make his mark without such a crisis, even if not so large a mark as he had hoped, by tapping into the optimistic spirit of his age. But President Clinton faces a very different time with a very different temperament. And unless he finds a way to challenge the dreary ethos of his own era, he will probably close the 20th century in the same unmemorable way in which William McKinley closed the 19th.