Boldness, leadership, decisiveness, imagination, taking risks on this, and that's had the reward of putting him pre-eminently not only in this country but abroad.
Religious tempers had been calmed, government functioning made more transparent (through the right to information law), and a series of welfare measures for the rural poor (pre-eminently, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme) initiated.
And Justice Scalia, a strong supporter of the court's states-rights agenda, wrote the opinion knocking down California's primary system which many including the two dissenting justices who have consistently opposed expanding states' rights thought was pre-eminently a matter for the states.