Obama is a decent man who was in over his head and who compiled a pretty good record abroad—no spectacular successes (save killing Bin Laden) and no spectacular failures either. And yes, though it’s pretty thin gruel, the economic picture might have been worse without his interventions. His signature health-care initiative (though passed without the majorities that made social security and civil rights so transformative) may become his greatest accomplishment. Whether it actually succeeds in reducing costs and improving care is another matter and, for now, impossible to judge.

If the president is reelected, challenges abound, lame-duck status will set in and the dangerous temptations of legacy will call. Given continued political dysfunction and uncertain postelectoral math, what can be accomplished? Social security or tax reform, maybe?

But greatness—no, that’s gone the way of the dodo, not just for Obama but likely for his successors too. And that’s probably a good thing.

The challenges we face—five deadly Ds of debt, deficits, dependence on hydrocarbons, dysfunctional politics and decaying infrastructure—seem to beyond the capacity of any president to handle. We need to get real and stop expecting our presidents to be a cross between Superman and Clint Eastwood.

It may take a crisis much greater than the one we faced in 2008 to shock our politicians into the kind of bipartisan cooperation and imposition of limits required to even begin to produce solutions. But at least we’ll stop fooling ourselves. Regardless of who becomes president in November, we owe it to ourselves (and to him) to scale back expectations, not to see the battle for the White House as a morality play that pits the forces of good against evil with no middle ground on which to stand. Maybe then we can kick our presidency addiction and focus more on solving our problems—rather than always looking to somebody else to solve them for us.

Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He served as an adviser to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations.