Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

Politics was at once clinical and human, driven by principles and passions that he (the leader) had to master and harness for the good of the whole.

Leadership meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.

He turned the presidency – and the President's House – into something it had not been before: a center of curiosity and inquiry, of vibrant institution that played informal but important roles in the broader life of the nation, from science to literature.

Jefferson was ambivalent about executive power – until he bore executive responsibility.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.

Broadly put, philosophers think: politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables; dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come.