A good source on Philippine governance in general is State And Society in the Philippines by Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso. There is an entire section of the book devoted to the Marcos years, and this is from where I will be drawing mainly. I also will be making use of a short monograph called The Transnational Dynamics of the Marcos Plunder by Belinda A. Aquino.

First, I will break this answer into two parts. The first part will deal with the question of reverance in the Philippines. This is really easy to answer if you are familiar with Philippine politics, and at the risk of violating a rule, I want to bring up the Duterte administration because it has played out very similarly so far. Both presidents initially ran on a platform of reform. Reforming of political corruption, to be specific. This has now been a very common platform to run on as a presidential candidate in the Philippines. Filipinos, at the time of the Marcos election, were pretty tired of how the government was run, and Marcos promised big changes. Also, it is very important to point out that Marcos was not different than previous presidents in how he got elected. He was able to defeat Macapagal by securing support from important groups of elites: Ilokano allies that were able to consolidate his support in the north, an alliance with the Lopez sugar-media-energy group, and huge funds from his days in the Senate (he himself had already been accused of corruption during that time). In addition, he had youth and he also had Imelda Marcos, his former-beauty-queen wife. He was a glamorous politician who promised great things.

Before moving on to his policies, I want to point out something. Marcos's support has always been strongest in northern Luzon. If you travel to Ilokos, you will find that he is far more popular there than anywhere else in the country (it is where he was from). You will not find him enjoying so much popularity elsewhere. In addition, many people have began to identify with the Marcos era because, frankly, history education is not particularly good in the Philippines. Requirements for becoming a teacher are very low, and the way the martial law years are taught (and this goes for all periods of Philippine history) basically are at the whims of whoever happens to be teaching. There has been a huge rise in revisionist history in the Philippines concerning Marcos, and this has coincided with the rise of Duterte, who has ties to Marcos. The Marcoses were also never actually punished. Imelda is still a fairly popular figure in the Philippines, and her son ran for vice-president in 2016. Duterte's platform is basically identical to Marcos, and Duterte has also done a lot to raise the image of the Marcoses.

Positive aspects to his leadership. There weren't a lot but I will dig into this a bit. Marcos actually was elected twice. He was the first Philippine president to be reelected, which happened in 1969. His first term was actually developmentalist, but that comes with a caveat: he never in his time as president pursued comprehensive land reform, and made use of executive and military agencies to shape society. Marcos implimented a rural development strategy aimed to increase productivity on existing rice lands in order to make other lands available for foreign investment in other crops. This included new irrigation systems, support for technological innovation, and upgrading of the road system. The Land Bank also pushed credit into the rural economy. The International Rice Research Institute at the University of the Philippines also began producing high-yielding rice varieties. He also improved rural education, constructing "Marcos schoolhouses" for public elementary and secondary education. He also passed new laws and revived previous ones that encouraged foreign investments into Philippine exports, as well as extending the central government's reach into the countryside. However, the economy floundered, and it is pretty clear that Marcos was already using the policies to enrich himself. Corruption was already rampant at this early stage. At one point, the Philippine peso was 2:1 USD. By 1970, it was 6:1 and falling. Inflation increased very rapidly. There was massive political turmoil at this point, with the social justice aspects of the Catholic Church, the reemergence of the Philippine Communist Party and its youth nationalist group, Kabataang Makabayang, in the wake of the financial issues. The turmoil built until 1972, when Marcos declared martial law. Despite martial law being devastating to the opposition, students, and other groups, a lot of Filipinos welcomed it because they believed it would be more stable and peaceful.

Marcos initially planned to create a "New Society". His policies of increasing the state's direct involvement in the economy through state corporations worked at first. As his power grew, by the mid-1970s the Philippines' economy was reaching a high point by many measures. However, this did not last since the country was still reliant on foreign exports and never left agriculture as the primary sector, even at the time of his fall in 1986.

His presidency was concerned more with self-preservation than actually helping the Philippines. He used any means to keep in power manipulating the foreign assistance, as well as recognizing that the US would support his dictatorship as long as he was friendly to US interests. There is even evidence that the CIA actually aided Marcos in his plundering of the Philippines. Marcos's reign was full of what could be called "half-measures": that is, he did impliment policies that appeared positive on the surface, but that had no real prospects of being successful and mainly aided in growing his own personal wealth, his allies, and consolidating their powers.