In modern history, the vast majority of chief executives have been chosen as correctives to their predecessor’s shortcomings.

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For the next few days, political chatter is going to be focused largely on the U.S. Congress. Don’t get used to that.

For one thing, the strong probability that Republicans will take over the U.S. Senate in this year’s midterm elections means that Barack Obama will likely spend his last two years in office with a Capitol Hill controlled entirely by his adversaries.

If past is prologue, that means we should expect two years of the White House trying to govern almost entirely by executive fiat. It’s likely immigration will be the first front on which that fight breaks out — but it will be a surprise if it’s the only one.

Let’s be honest though: The end of a president’s second term is rarely about the people who are already in power (at least until the Commander-in-Chief’s final days, when the encomiums start getting rolled out).

Most of the focus is going to be on the presidential race to come in 2016. And — have some antiemetics at the ready — that conversation is going to get started next week, as soon as the midterms are over.

It’s fatiguing, but we live in the era of the permanent campaign. Hillary Clinton — who is, as the Tracy Flick of American politics, always overprepared — has been in this race since approximately 1981.

So what should Americans be looking for when they pick Barack Obama’s successor?

Well, if history is any guide, they’ll likely be shopping for someone partially on the basis of their differences with the current president. In modern history, the vast majority of chief executives have been chosen as correctives to their predecessor’s shortcomings.

Putting aside presidents who’ve left office prematurely (FDR and JFK via death, Nixon via resignation), only Ronald Reagan departed the White House with his popularity sufficiently intact to have coattails for his successor. Barack Obama, who looks headed towards a denouement no sunnier than George W. Bush’s, shouldn’t expect to replicate that success.

What does this mean in tangible terms? Well, the next presidential electorate will probably be hungry for someone who’s direct rather than a model of academic nuance. They’ll probably want someone with a sense of executive dispatch, not an individual prone to Obameseque dithering. Given the lack of faith in government engendered by the last several years, they’re also likely to place a high premium on competence.

But that’s not the question I originally asked, is it? (Thanks for noticing). No, the original prompt was what should the American people be looking for. The list of traits above isn’t a bad place to start, but let me add a couple of suggestions.

Look Outside Elite Circles — To be clear: The use of the word “elite” here is more art than science. Anybody who’s in a position to run a serious presidential campaign is elite by any meaningful definition of the word. But background matters.

By the time the next president is inaugurated it’ll have been nearly 30 years since we had a president that hadn’t spend some time in the Ivy League (Eureka College’s own Ronald Reagan). Similarly, we’d probably do well to avoid anyone who comes from inherited wealth or power. None of these things are dispositive — you could be a rich Harvard man and still be a decent president — but they can be warning signs.

At a time when the governing class in Washington seems more removed from Main Street America than ever before, a president who doesn’t have to manufacture sympathy for the common man would be a nice change of pace.

Search Out Executive Experience — With all due respect to the many talented U.S. Senators who may throw their hats in the ring in 2016, having actually run large, complex institutions ought to be a prerequisite for the job at a time when the executive branch seems to be spinning out of control (we don’t need two consecutive presidents who only learn about mishaps in their administration by reading the newspapers).

Governors also bring another important (and often overlooked) variable to presidential campaigns: We have a feeling for where — and for what — they may be willing to cut deals. Being a legislator is primarily about voicing your opinion. Being an executive is about setting priorities and seeing them through to fruition — and about making tactical decisions about when to compromise and when to abandon previous pursuits.  One of the dangers of electing a Senator is not knowing what he’d be willing to sacrifice until he’s already done so.

Look for Someone Who Can Withstand Adversity — This may seem obvious in the abstract, but no one seemed to apply this criterion to Barack Obama, someone who seemingly glided through life without so much as an abrasion prior to entering the Oval Office.

The presidency is a marathon, not a sprint, and it requires a certain measure of resilience when the inevitable setbacks come. Obama, with his porcelain ego, still seems, six years into the job, as if he’s outraged by the very notion that anyone could disagree with him. That marks him as temperamentally unsuited to lead a democracy.

Pull back and think about the current American moment in a broader historical context.

The 21st century has thus far been a pretty miserable time in American life. It started with 9/11, preceded through the war in Iraq, took in Hurricane Katrina and the financial crisis, continued with the failings of ObamaCare and the current White House’s economic recovery efforts, and now lives on with ISIS, Ebola and too many government scandals to count.

There’s a reason Americans have lost faith in Washington — and a reason they think the American moment may be slowly drawing to a close.

If the next President hopes to arrest that trend — and anyone who doesn’t isn’t worthy of the job — he will have to possess a remarkable resilience and a capacity to transfer that tenacity to the electorate. If he doesn’t … well, decline, as they say, is a choice.