Gavin Newsom

Achilles has his heel and his hubris to go along with his great strengths.

So heroism is really a negotiation, sometimes a war within a person over their great strengths.

So if you leave George Washington...

out on his marble statue collecting pigeon shit, he seems perfect, you know, never tells a lie, cut down a cherry tree, coin across the Potomac.

But if you examine him and understand that he's a very human character, he owns 577 human beings in his lifetime, as the writer Rick Atkinson said, you can't square that circle, he's right.

He's rash on the battlefield, risking the entire cause by rushing out into the field.

If he's killed or captured, it's all over.

He makes some tactical mistakes that are in some ways inexcusable.

And yet he's able to convince people to fight him the dead of night.

He defers to Congress.

He has great humility.

He picks subordinate talent, generals that are better than him, like Benedict Arnold and Nathaniel Green.

And he twice gives up power, military at the height of his military power and the presidency at the height of his political power.

And that has set us in motion.

So you can have in a story that we tell, which is as much bottom up as it is top down, you can have the almost exhilarating, you know, off brand thing that we don't have a country without him.

And yet, in order to tell the story correctly, you know, you have to do all the other things.

We live in a highlight world, right?

Babe Ruth comes up.

he hits a home run, right?

But Babe Ruth struck out many more times than he hit home runs.