Molineaux is the lead catalyst for American Future, a research project that discovers what Americans prefer for their personal future lives. The research informs community planners with grassroots community preferences. Previously, Molineaux was the president/CEO of The Bridge Alliance.
We love heroic leaders. We admire heroes and trust them to tackle our big problems. In a way, we like the heroes to take care of those problems for us, relieving us of our citizen responsibilities. But what happens when our leaders fail us? How do we replace a heroic leader who has become bloated with ego? Or incompetent?
Heroic leaders are good for certain times and specific challenges, like uniting people against a common enemy. We find their charisma and inspiration compelling. They help us find our courage to tackle things together. We become a team, supporting the hero’s vision.
Yet there are several situations where heroic leadership is not helpful or perhaps harmful. I find heroic leadership harmful when the chosen hero causes distrust, encouraging paranoia among their followers. We must choose our heroes carefully, identifying values and virtues our country needs, then measuring our leaders by these values and virtues.
A project launched in 2019 sought to educate college students to “ Vote by Design.” Its workbook helped voters to think about the qualifications needed for the president, with professional and personal qualities. Reading through the workbook felt similar to serving on jury duty. I didn’t want to think this much, but once I was there and reminded of my role as a citizen, I knew I had to do my best.
As citizens, our role is to be job interviewers! The more we identify qualities we want our chosen and elected leaders to have, the easier it is to choose.
Few are happy with the 2024 choices we’ve been offered for president. Our excitement or feelings about the candidates are currently unimportant. It’s what we do with the choices we have that matter. Have you considered the team supporting the two likely candidates? We could extend this exploration of values and virtues to the vice presidential picks and one or more likely Cabinet members. This is prudent in 2024 because both candidates are elders. Death is a possibility. Who are their current and past advisors?
Who is the “hero in waiting?” And what qualifications and skills do they have? They will likely be needed to support or replace the president. Who are the candidates surrounding themselves with? What type of leaders are on the team? This choice to examine the team surrounding each candidate is needed because our definition of a leader has been expanding from “heroic” to “facilitator.” What a welcome change!
A facilitative leader gathers a team of experts and guides them to bring their best to the job. The leader facilitates a solution that was not previously known but is better for all the input received. Facilitative leaders usually share credit for accomplishing the goal with the entire team. It is a longer and messier process to achieve results. Patience is required. Abraham Lincoln was this type of leader. In his time, he held the nation together through a Civil War.
Heroic leaders command action. They tend to make everything black and white, avoiding nuance. Our human brains love this. It is simple and easy to follow. It’s also like having a hammer and thinking every problem is a nail. If instead, the problem is complicated, the hammer approach makes things worse. Teddy Roosevelt was that type of leader, exposing corruption with his Rough Rider persona. He was sometimes effective and often there were unintended consequences for his actions. People were the collateral damage for his heroism.
Our duty calls as we enter the remaining months of an election that no one wants. If we abdicate our role as citizens, power-hungry people will fill the void with whatever benefits them the most. It is up to us to pick the best presidential team to move our nation forward.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.