There are a number of points in history where only one person could have done what was done. Not just politics, but in a variety of situations. Sticking with Politics, and starting with the Cuban Missile Crisis, only Kennedy could have done what he did during the crisis.
No other President before, or since could have. Any other President would have bowed to the demands of the Military to bomb the anti aircraft sites. That would have led to a retaliatory strike on either Berlin, or Florida. Only Kennedy would have the certainty to stand up and refuse the Military demands. Eisenhower would not, LBJ would not.
No one else could have done what Kennedy did. That is why he is so admired. But there are other points. There is an old saying. Only Nixon could have gone to China. The reason that saying is used, and true, is that only Nixon had the long history of being so rabidly anti-communist that the people trusted him to keep American interests secure. In other words the people trusted him to negotiate and not give away the store.
Reagan. Only Reagan could have walked away from Iceland secure in his belief that he had just doomed the Soviet Union. Everyone else thought this was the wrong move. Everyone else wanted the deal that the Soviets were offering, and end to Nuclear Weapons. Only Reagan would pass on the deal, and it was demonstrated by History to be the right move.
Truman. Only Truman would have the courage to stand up and refuse to allow the Atomic Bomb to be used in North Korea. Everyone else, anyone else, would have bowed to the request from MacArthur. MacArthur had the public following. But only Truman had the courage to make the point final that the Civilian Government was in control of the Military.
It wasn’t just Americans either. Nobody but Margaret Thatcher would have ordered the Military to fight a war at the end of an impossibly long supply chain, dangerously close to the Enemy supplies, with such a small force, to recapture the Falkland Islands. Nobody else would have done so with the paltry military that Britain had.
Do you imagine that there was anyone else who could have led the British People alone against the might of the Nazi’s Besides Churchill?
There were a handful of vital people in the NASA program to reach the moon. Neil Armstrong was not one of those vital people. If Apollo 11 had aborted because of the computer problem on approach then Apollo 12 would have been the first man on the moon. Instead of Armstrong, it would have been Pete Conrad.
Those few vital people are those like John Aaron. The Engineer who saved Apollo 12, and the one who recognized the biggest priority for Apollo 13 was energy. Aaron was a brilliant Engineer. Aaron isn’t alone, but I’m not going to waste your time with names of people you’ve never heard of.
There were many points in History where one person was the only one who could have done it. Three Mile Island. Only Carter had the understanding of nuclear power that allowed him to instantly understand what was happening. Only Carter had the training to know that he could travel there safely and that allowed him to overrule the adamant objections of his staff, and probably the Secret Service. Nobody but Carter would have gone, and nobody but Carter could. He was just the right person, at the right place, at the right time.
But that is true of many more situations. Curiously enough, you can’t say that about W. Obama, or a lot of others who have inhabited the White House. Most residents of that house have not had the defining moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the lifetime of rhetoric to justify the trust to open China, or the understanding of the nuances like Reagan. All of them went against the advice of the experts, and all of them were proven right.
That’s the thing. Each of them gambled like a Texas Hold-em playing going all in. Only the pot wasn’t a life savings, it was literally the nation’s future. Think of this. If Argentina had won the Faulklands war, would Britain have emerged as a world power? Or would they be viewed like The Netherlands, a small nation with an irrelevant military?
Reagan could well have doomed the world to another fifty years of Cold War. Nixon could well have failed in his diplomatic efforts and actually triggered a regional war with China.
Kennedy could well have been wrong, and the right answer was to send in the Military. His delays and half measures could be damned by History as the irresolute moves of a spineless fool. If he had failed, History would be flooded with the idea that Kennedy screwed it up because he was on strong medication for his back pain.
It is also important to note that these individuals did not do everything well. Just the one thing, when it really mattered. When it was all on the line.
Saying that Trump could not have gotten us through the Cuban Missile Crisis is true. Then again, no one else could have. There was a plane called the Gimli Glider. It ran out of fuel, a new 757 aircraft and it ran out of gas. The pilots who landed the plane performed a near miracle in doing so. Every other pilot that was put in the simulator to try their hand at the problem, crashed. Every one. Only one man kept it from being a disaster. He’s not the only example of that. There are others.
Do we demand that all pilots are able to perform a miracle? Do we demand that all Presidents are able to read the play of the enemy and go against the advice of their advisors to do what eventually wins? No, we pick the best of the available choices, and we hope that it works out in the future.
This is where your analogy falls down. Hillary would not be any better. Her history is one of clever plans that were always just that hair short of clever enough to actually work. If Hillary had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Southern states would be radioactive ash for another fifty years.