FDR's most enduring institutional legacy was the Executive Office of the President, which over the years has taken over the traditional party functions of linking the president to interest groups, staffing the administration, and developing policies. Presidential debates, which place the candidates in the spotlight as solo acts rather than as featured players in a party ensemble, accentuate the problem Roosevelt created. In the absence of greatness, smaller virtues may deserve more of our attention. Greenstein also looks at five other leadership traits in assessing each of the presidents from Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. Greenstein is no less kind to the Republican presidents when it comes to the five leadership skills.
Democratic presidents fail the leadership skills test as badly as they fail the emotional test.
All the others score a good bit lower. Surely the historians were right to place Kennedy, Johnson, and Truman above Nixon and Ford, in contrast to Greenstein's arrangement. Landy and Milkis seem to think it is. The negative on this question was perhaps best defended in a famous 1977 Commentary article by political scientist Nelson W. Polsby. The worst of both worlds surely comes when a sitting president becomes obsessed with how historians will rate him.