The Presidency A White House Paradox for the '90S: The Presidency Is an Executive Office with More - and Less - Real Power Than at Any Other Time in United States History

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EVEN major candidates, none of whom really need the work, are campaigning for the job. Yet once won, the presidency is very likely to grow even more demanding than it is now as the 1990s advance.

The next two terms, says presidential scholar Erwin Hargrove of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., "will be very frustrating for whoever wins."

The recession will probably end. But the weight of unmet problems - in education, roads and other aging amenities, reform of the health-care system, and the ever-growing burden of public debt - still piles up at the White House door.

And some of the traditional tools a president has to solve them are …