Newsflash: Cover stories are hardly ever about how awesome someone is. One person rarely appears on many simultaneously. You hardly ever see one face broadcast all over Times Square, especially over the word 'Messiah?'
If you want your lead to look like Captain Awesome McSuck My Balls you have to try harder. Like, original 'State of Play' harder, where the bright young hope of his party was not introduced during an interview in which a flirty reporter asked him to comment on the rumors God was stepping down next year to let him the take over. That is not what State of Play did.
This is what they did: In what looked like a dry committee hearing he personally reamed an oil company shill a new one with his team's own investigative research.
He earned respect.
Earned.
Stop telling us your lead is so damn cool and show us something.
(Show, don't tell. Didn't I read that in a screenwriting book somewhere?)
