What would America’s best presidents say to us now?

Here’s how the best did it, and what we can learn from them

Editor’s note: Contributing columnist Talmage Boston has written a book, How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons From Our Top Presidents, which has been endorsed by several presidential historians, including three Pulitzer Prize winners. It will be released on April 2. For Presidents Day this election year, Boston has provided the following excerpt from the closing chapter of the book.

To write these chapters on our eight greatest presidents, I essentially had to live with them in my home for two years after they had been mere come-and-go visitors in my intellectual neighborhood for over a half century.