Best of the Pres: PI's List of the Most Respected Presidential Characteristics

10. John F. Kennedy's ambition. JFK displayed impressive Presidential leadership in three highly important yet previously unrelated areas. He enhanced American prestige as he inspired public support for space travel and exploration, despite steep risks, frequent failure, and high cost. He also impressively resisted racist pressure by supporting integration in public schools and other highly controversial civil rights policies. Third, he helped pass the biggest tax cut in American history, promoting growth and setting a strong precedent for future chief executives.

9. Dwight Eisenhower's vision for the Interstate Highway System. The Interstate Highway System allowed for maximum protection of the United States, gave easy access to the US to anyone with an automobile, created countless cities and tourist attractions, and helped spur the prosperous American car industry. The roads in America are still extremely well-designed, maintained and refreshed. Eisenhower deserves credit for undertaking (and succeeding) in a project as ambitious as it was at the time.

8. Teddy Roosevelt's leadership on the Panama Canal. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to cut the long boat trip between New York and California down 8,000 miles by building a canal through (then) Columbia. He had a problem, however, with the Columbian government. Years before TR, the French were attempting to build the same canal. The Columbians wanted to cheat the French out of their initial work on the Canal. They wanted to have the US government buy the French equipment yet give the moines back to the Columbian government. Teddy didn’t think much of that strategy, so instead he incited a revolution in region now known as Panama in order to avoid dealing with the Columbian Senate. He bribed the Columbian soldiers with $50 and in a few hours created Panama (its Constitution was written in advance) bought it for $10.5 mil. That’s how they got it done back in 1903.

7. LBJ's civil rights protection. Lyndon Johnson formally ended the Jim Crow laws in the South and just as importantly provided civil rights protection to women. He also appointed the first black Supreme Court justice in Thurgood Marshall. For a white Southerner at the time to so vehemently oppose discrimination of any kind was noteworthy. The Civil Rights Act was necessary for the growth of the US and very few presidents before or since would have the political savvy to push such a revolutionary bill through Congress.

6. Bill Clinton's apostasy. Despite being derided (often correctly), as a collectivist populist, Mr. Clinton somewhat ironically is responsible for two of the most influential free-market reforms in American history, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and NAFTA. Although both are detested policies by the passionate socialists with whom Mr. Clinton is so often associated, he still supported them. Free trade was most impressively promoted by Mr. Clinton. Against the howls of his own party, he spoken openly on the value of globalization, shifting public opinion and creating far more in legislative achievements for the cause than his supposedly free-market successor.

5. Richard Nixon's resistance to the haters. Mr. Nixon lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and lost his bid to be governor of California in 1962. Despite this, and the loud public sentiment that his career was over, he mounted an unprecedented political comeback and was soundly elected as a two-term president. During his climb back, few politicians encountered more hate from his political opponents. He was maligned, not as mere disagreement, but with ad hominem vitriol like no other man at the time. Protesters and critics followed Nixon assiduously, yet he impressively resisted their pressure and achieved great success against even greater odds. He even taunted protesters from his Presidential limosuine. You can't beat that.

4. James Polk's fearless purchase of the southwestern United States at pennies an acre. James Polk is possibly the most underrated president of all time. He promised to serve one term, and he did, despite that he would have won re-election if he did run again. He passed the forward-thinking free-market success story known as the Walker Tariff. He also signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican-American war, and expanded the young country to the Pacific Ocean. They don’t make politicians like President Polk anymore.

3. Ronald Reagan's free-market stewardship. Mr. Reagan was instrumental in leading the United States and the world away from the cancerous socialist ideology that had consumed the West for the past several decades. He opposed communism passionately and publicly, and he did so by principal rather than pragmatism. He won the record support of the nation for his confident views on the superiority of market economics, views which would eventually become adopted as truth following the fall of the Soviet Union. Most importantly, his policies themselves enjoyed empirical success that would give them strong future support in the United States and around the world.

2. Harry Truman's decision to drop the Bomb. The toughest decision in the history of the modern world was made by Harry Truman. He saved possibly millions of American and Japanese lives ordering for two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unlike lesser men, he did not back down knowing that his decision would have serious repercussions on the history of human events. The gravity of the decision cannot be overlooked. Ordering the killing of over 200,000 people can never be overlooked. However, Truman made the decision with decisiveness and confidence.

1. George Washington's limitation of his own power. Mr. Washington, directly following the Revolutionary War, was a national hero, on a scale unimaginable in today's fractured society. He was respected (and even deified) rightly as a man that had an instrumental role in delivering a nation from bondage into liberty and independence. Despite this, he refused a generous salary offer and numerous convenient fringe benefits to enhance his political power, prestige and image. He also refused a third term, setting the de facto term limit that would last until FDR's Machiavellian ambitions in the 1930s. His decision to hand over power peacefully and to assume a weaker Presidential position created a political system which would, for the first time in the history of the world, build an empire on limited government. His farewell address, warning against partisanship in politics, was also impressive.

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