TIME recently gathered four presidential historians--George Mason University's Richard Norton Smith, Yale University's Beverly Gage, and Russell Riley and David Coleman of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia--to discuss presidential temperament: what it is, who had it and how much it matters in the White House. An excerpt of their conversation:
Gage: What people are trying to get at when they use the word temperament is something along the lines of instinct--how someone approaches a situation and particularly, I think, how someone approaches a crisis.
Riley: It's a little bit easier if you're talking about an...