Richard Nixon suffered the stigma of being the only U.S. president forced to resign, and his leadership suffered greatly under the weight of Watergate. But the disgraced president did fire off one flare of good leadership as his administration crashed. Ironically, it ensured the end of his presidency.

On April 4, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy stepped to the microphone in a poor neighborhood in Indianapolis and stunned the crowd with the news that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed. The sheriff had tried to persuade Kennedy to cancel his appearance, saying it was too dangerous to address an African-American crowd. Kennedy refused.

Here are some squibs from our “elected leaders.” For starters: Answer your own phone. Alan Simpson, former U.S. senator from Wyoming, picked up this call in 1980: “Where is that skinny bastard?” “Speaking,” Simpson replied.

Harry Truman didn’t go to college but educated himself through reading widely, from Plutarch and Shakespeare to Dickens and the Koran. His favorite author was Mark Twain. Truman kept a framed copy of his most prized Twain quotation on his desk in the Oval Office: “Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”