Consider this: We are in the midst of more than a decade-long streak of pessimism about the state of the country, partisanship is at all-time highs and the media have splintered — Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth — in a thousand directions all at once.

Add those three major factors up and what becomes clear is that any president elected (or re-elected) this November has slim hopes — or at the most a very narrow window — for political success.

“Due to the evolution of our politics and media, we may never see a two-term president again,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior strategist for President George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns…

The scarier scenario — whispered about by political strategists in both parties — is that there is neither a mandate for either side in November nor a post-election catharsis, meaning that the next president gets no honeymoon period and, therefore, policy and/or political progress will fail before it ever has a chance to succeed.