Business abhors a leadership vacuum. which is why, most of this year, we have been dealing with an unsettling paradox: Never before have we so wanted and needed strong leadership, yet rarely have we been so disappointed.

The result has been a kind of national and corporate paralysis.  We wanted the youth and vigor of Tim Geithner, but not his inexperience. Though President Obama remains wildly popular in opinion polls, voters continue to believe that the country’s economy is going nowhere. Corporate leaders like General Motors Corp.’s Rick Wagoner have been tossed out—a good thing, right?—but it is not clear who, or what, is going to fill the void left by their departure.

Now the vacuum may finally be slowly filling. The president and his administration are finding their voice. The markets show glimmers of hope. The auto industry, for better or worse, is being revamped. Business leaders are no longer automatically dismissed as villains.

And that raises what may be the most important question of the moment we’re in: Who and what will it take to get us out of this crisis?

To answer that question, we looked to history, in search of the best and worst CEOs of all time. The executives on our lists were nominated by top business-school professors, who helped us pinpoint the CEOs who stand out in the history of American companies. The debate over the picks is likely to be fierce, if our own office is any indication. But the results are telling: All the people on the Best list are more than just good managers.

They’re transformative leaders. Some of them, like Henry Ford, invented entire industries (in his case, mass-produced cars). Others, like Steve Jobs and Sam Walton, turned existing business models (consumer electronics and big-box retailing, respectively) on their heads.

Depressingly, however, we also have lived through the tenures of some of the worst CEOs in recent history. As our list shows, these executives were not just at the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re more than just managerially inept. These are people who destroyed the value of their companies (Ken Lay and Enron) and, in a few cases, their entire industries (Dick Fuld and the investment-banking business).

What the best CEOs know by instinct—and what the worst can never be taught—is that doing what’s popular or what’s expected isn’t leadership. Sometimes, being brash and bold, or even annoying, is what’s required. We asked Eliot Spitzer—who at various times has been all of those things—how he would have handled the financial crisis if he hadn’t been run out of town. His comments are, characteristically, surprising, and they shed new light on what should have been done by Spitzer’s predecessors. (Are you listening, Mr. Cuomo?)

Matthew Malone’s interview with Spitzer accompanies a look at which of the recent crop of Wall Street titans could be prosecuted. Malone surveyed some of the nation’s most prominent legal minds, from Representative Barney Frank and former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to criminal-defense lawyer Stanley Arkin, to determine who is most responsible for our current financial funk.

The answers help explain how we got here. But what’s more important is where we go next. At Condé Nast
Portfolio, we’ll be chronicling the leaders who emerge to help us get there.