t is Presidents Day, a time when, in centennial years, the nation was embroiled in campaigns that produced epochal changes. Yet in neither 1800 nor 1900 did the voters rise up with one voice to demand the change they soon got.
Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 - two of history's greatest reform presidents. But Jefferson barely squeaked in - the House elevated him after he and Aaron Burr had split the electoral vote. And voters in 1900 reelected William McKinley, a slow-moving conciliator; it was an assassin's bullet that put Vice President Roosevelt in the White House the following September.
Now the calendar has turned again, and the current campaign offers voters in both parties choices of how much change they want and what kind.
Al Gore and George Bush are descendants of the last two presidents (the former politically, the latter biologically) and thereby offer some level of continuity. Bill Bradley and John McCain claim to be insurgents of one sort or another.
This year's backdrop is unique. Bill Clinton was only the second president to be impeached, and all the candidates have sought to distance themselves from his misbehavior. Yet voters in some recent elections have tried too hard to right past wrongs: Jimmy Carter won the first post-Watergate election in 1976 largely by promising never to tell a lie. The other side of the Clinton factor is that the economy is strong, his job approval rating is exceptionally high, and he is talking about the future more convincingly than any of the candidates.
Jefferson's ''personal contribution to American political institutions,'' according to historian Daniel J. Boorstin, ''was his model of a strong presidency.''
Roosevelt boldly claimed that the president should exercise all power not specifically prohibited by the Constitution or Congress, ''and not to content himself with the negative merits of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin.''
Now is the time to demand the deeper presidential philosophies of this year's candidates. With them, voters might get a strong leader not by luck, but by design.
