I’ve long been intrigued by the presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower and believe they each offer important and illuminating examples of the kind of statesmanship the United States urgently needs.

Roosevelt was a liberal Democrat and Eisenhower a conservative Republican. Their families, educations, personalities, professional backgrounds, governing styles and political skills could not have been more different. However, each represented the best of his party’s governing philosophy and leadership tradition. Both offer compelling statesmanship lessons.

Roosevelt was from a wealthy New York family. His charmed early life and promising political career were slowed, but not halted, when he was stricken with polio in his late 30s. He refused to be derailed by his partial paralysis, became an effective governor of New York and then was elected four times as president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He led America through the Depression with an activist and experimental approach to governing.

“It is common sense to take a method and try it,” he said. “If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But above all, try something.”

David Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, recently told me that Roosevelt possessed a genius that approached “political magic.” He understood the mood of his time, with its complex blend of anger, fear and despair. According to Kennedy, Roosevelt had the special ability to “understand historical........

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