When Jill Abramson was assigned to her first presidential campaign, in 1976, elections had become media spectacles. The first presidential debates since 1960 were held that year, and the candidates" high and low moments were instantly assessed and picked apart, just as they were in 2012. But much else has changed. Today we inhabit the age of incessant, up-to-the-nanosecond polling, deep-pocketed PAC ads, round-the-clock "messaging" from candidates and their handlers, and - do we need to add? - blanket newspaper coverage, in print and online. As The New York Times's executive editor, Abramson supervises a bewildering array of moving parts. She listed some of them in an e-mail: "Live-streaming video of big campaign moments like the conventions and debates, live blogging, poll analysis, graphics, photography," in addition to the many articles written by The Times's team of campaign reporters. "Presenting it all in a coherent way has been an interesting challenge," Abramson told us. And yet, she added, "this election does not seem as big a historical watershed as four years ago," when the nation, in the midst of an economic crisis, elected its first African-American president. For Abramson, who studied history at Harvard, the interplay of politics past and present is a longstanding preoccupation, as is clear from her review of Jon Meacham's "Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power." Jefferson and his contemporaries were steeped in history. Does Abramson detect an equivalent sense of the past in today's contenders for the White House? "President Obama is a history buff and has brought American historians, including Robert Caro, to the White House for salonlike conversations," she pointed out. He seems very aware of his place in history. And his opponent? Mitt Romney's election would be a huge moment in the difficult history of Mormons in America as well as another turn in the evolution of the American conservative movement.