People call on their cultural resources to find relief for their fears and reassurance about their hopes. Among those resources is the mysterious and hazardous tool called leadership. There are many traditions of leadership in world cultures, but the contemporary notions about leading and leaders are ever-changing, so that traditional understandings are not necessarily respected anymore. Popular culture has a different vision of the leader of the country these days. Not quite divine, the President of the United States is still a figure of awesome power and responsibility. In this article, the author discusses popular culture's new directions in leadership.