Before we choose our next president, let’s consider our best presidents
Here’s how the best did it.
By Talmage Boston
With the Iowa Republican caucus set for Jan. 15, the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries in February, and Super Tuesday (14 primaries, including Texas) teed up for March 5, the 2024 presidential race is officially on.
As of now, the Republican Party has 11 declared candidates: a former president, a former vice president, two current governors, three former governors, a current senator, a former congressman, a current big city mayor, and an entrepreneur who’s never held office. The Democrats have a smaller field: an incumbent president, an environmental lawyer, and an author/motivational speaker.
With “independent” voters now constituting 44% of the population, should Donald Trump and Joe Biden (the current party front-runners) become the nominees, the No Labels national political organization plans to run a third-party candidate, who’s likely to be a current senator with a history of crossing party lines to support legislation.
Given this variety of candidates, what should be voters’ top priority when evaluating the options as they step into the booth on Super Tuesday for their party’s primary?
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Perhaps the candidates’ policies on the key issues? Naaah. Abby McCloskey’s recent essay; in these pages established that campaigns aren’t interested in promoting positions on key issues with any specificity. Either they know there’s not much difference in their policies, or else they think it’s better to keep issue discussions vague and thereby allow a candidate to appeal to a broader base.
If policy positions don’t matter much, then what does? Unfortunately, for many voters, the most important criterion appears to be how hard a candidate can throw stones at his barking opponents.
Ideally, all would agree that America could use the most highly principled, capable leader among the cast of candidates who has the wherewithal to step up on our next Inauguration Day and begin dealing with the challenging road that lies ahead for our country. If that’s what we’re after, can history provide guidance on how to find it? The answer, of course, is, “Yes, history can help,” but before addressing the needed virtues in the optimal candidate, it makes sense to recognize exactly what the position entails.
To get an accurate job description for what it takes to be president of the United States, the best source is C-SPAN. For the last few decades, the network has sponsored a poll each time a new president enters the White House as his predecessor departs. The voters in the pool are America’s leading historians who rank all past presidents best-to-worst in the 10 most important skills needed for the job. Those necessary talents are public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/agenda-setting, pursuit of equal justice for all and performance within the context of his time.
Based on these evaluations in the 2017 and 2021 polls, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were our best presidents, in that order.
Obviously, to score well in these varied areas of responsibility, a president must have extraordinary leadership traits. So what traits did these men possess that made them so effective in handling the job’s wide-ranging dimensions during the years they led the nation? Aren’t they the same traits we should be looking for when we size up the 2024 candidates?
I’ve spent the last two years studying the most heralded biographies of America’s greatest presidents while researching my book, How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons From Our Top Presidents, to be released April 2. My analysis has led me to reach the following conclusions about exactly what it was that produced presidential greatness in the four guys on Mount Rushmore as well as those who are Rushmore-worthy but didn’t enter the White House until after Gutzon Borglum started sculpting his mountain masterpiece in 1927.
George Washington: A man with unimpeachable integrity who learned from his mistakes, maintained the humility needed to embrace collaborative decision-making, refused to be a self-promoter, and prioritized doing what it took to unify his constituents.
Thomas Jefferson: A visionary who built consensus by proactively establishing a measure of harmony between his friends and foes, while operating as a principled pragmatist to gain closure on his desired objectives.
Abraham Lincoln: An unwavering moralist who believed that “right makes might” and dominated his era through magnanimity coupled with equanimity, while always keeping his promises.
Theodore Roosevelt: A lifelong learner who refused to be bound by past practices or conventional wisdom. As president, used every tool in the diplomat’s toolkit to avoid protracted conflict by mediating the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Moroccan crisis of 1906 and the second Hague Convention in 1907.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: A fearless leader who stared down life-changing adversity, and mastered the act of bending public sentiment toward his desired goal by moving the needle one notch at a time.
Dwight Eisenhower: An expert at structuring a complex yet well-organized executive branch, and exercised patience to hit his targets, while being ready to play hardball when necessary whenever people misbehaved.
John F. Kennedy: A leader who grew steadily in foreign policy, fiscal policy and civil rights wisdom with each passing year, while staying calm amid crises, and purveying words that inspired both national and worldwide progress.
Ronald Reagan: An optimist who motivated multitudes to share his optimism, and persevered in achieving his long-term vision by making small compromises when necessary to get deals done.
I’ve left Truman out of this list intentionally because, in my opinion, his leadership traits don’t rise to the same level as these top eight. Certainly, each of my chosen eight presidents had noteworthy flaws, but when we’re looking for the best candidate to take the oath on Jan. 20, 2025, we should be guided by the most important virtues that made these leaders our best.
Upon acknowledging these presidential traits that have been instrumental to the success of our nation’s history, voters should then study the lives and words of all the candidates who aspire to grasp the brass ring in 2024. Identify the one who comes closest to having at least some of these traits in his or her skill set. Do either the current or the former president, as their party’s front-runners, possess at least some of the traits? If not, review their challengers and determine what they might bring to the office that would empower them to perform the job admirably.
History proves that the candidate with more of these strengths in his or her repertoire likely has the best chance of leading America to a better place in the future.
As a parting suggestion for all who engage in the voting decision process, please remember the immortal words of Winston Churchill: “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog who barks.”
Talmage Boston is a presidential historian, practicing lawyer and contributing columnist for the Dallas Morning News.
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