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 golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.