McCullough believes that true leadership is fundamentally a product of personal character, not charisma, intellect, or political maneuvering. In his profiles of figures like George Washington and Harry Truman, McCullough argues that courage, integrity, humility, and an unwavering sense of duty are the decisive factors in shaping national outcomes. He contrasts these substantive virtues with the superficiality of celebrity, suggesting that leaders who leave the most enduring positive legacies often appear unglamorous but possess an unshakeable inner core. For McCullough, character is the ultimate gauge of a leader’s worth and historical significance.

George Washington is McCullough’s primary example of a leader whose moral authority was indispensable to the nation’s founding. Washington was not a gifted orator or a military genius, but his stability and decency unified a fragile new country. McCullough quotes Abigail Adams, who praised Washington’s balanced character: “He is polite with dignity, affable without familiarity, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity, modest, wise, and good” (72). This temperament was most crucial in moments of crisis. Citing a poet, Adams wrote that “Affliction is a good man’s shining time” (73), a line McCullough uses to frame Washington’s resilience during the Revolution’s darkest hours. It was this steadfastness, not battlefield brilliance, that made him the “authentic great man” (76) essential to the American experiment.

In a similar vein, McCullough portrays Harry S. Truman as a leader whose strength of character was concealed behind an ordinary exterior. Contrasting him with the patrician Franklin D. Roosevelt and the heroic Dwight D. Eisenhower, McCullough notes Truman’s “Middle Western plainness of manner” (78). However, this “seemingly ordinary American” (79) possessed phenomenal stamina and self-respect that allowed him to rise to extraordinary challenges. After a humiliating midterm election defeat in 1946, Truman resolved to do as he “damn please for the next two years” for the good of the country (78). This decision, born of inner conviction, led to some of his greatest achievements, including the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the first civil right message to congress, and the desegregation of the armed forces. His leadership demonstrates that fortitude and a clear sense of self are more powerful than public image.

McCullough’s essay on the artist Thomas Eakins allows him to define heroism in a way he applies to his political subjects. Eakins chose to paint people of “self-discipline, high purpose, and high performance achieved through rigorous training, hard work, and continued study” (53). These were not the celebrities of the day but individuals “doing work of value to society” (53). McCullough’s appreciation of Eakins’s method illuminates his admiration for Washington and Truman, leaders valued for their substance over their style. They embodied the quiet, determined competence that McCullough sees as the bedrock of constructive leadership, with character as the true, lasting source of national strength.