Power gathers people. Some arrive through competence, some through devotion, some through accident, and some through the gravitational pull of a leader’s personality.
In the modern presidency, aides often serve as extensions of the president’s habits, anxieties and information needs. Yet across American history, the nature of influence near a leader has varied dramatically. Few comparisons illustrate this contrast more sharply than the difference between Natalie Harp, a close personal aide to Donald Trump, and Fox Conner, the strategic mentor who shaped Dwight Eisenhower’s intellectual formation.
Donald Trump and aide Natalie Harp exit Marine One on the Ellipse near the White House on August 16, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Harp’s influence is rooted in proximity. She is physically near the president, often constantly. Her role is not defined by policy expertise or strategic insight but by emotional utility: she filters information, prints flattering commentary, manages social media posts, and reinforces the narratives the president prefers. Her influence is atmospheric — shaping what the president sees, hears and feels in the moment.
In this sense, Harp represents a modern phenomenon: the personal aide whose power derives from loyalty, devotion and the ability to maintain a leader’s preferred informational environment.
Conner represents the opposite tradition. As G‑3 of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, Conner was a master strategist, a builder of institutions and a mentor of future generals. His influence on Eisenhower was not emotional but intellectual. He required Eisenhower to read Clausewitz repeatedly, to refight historical campaigns and to master the principles of coalition warfare.
Conner’s proximity to power was not constant, but his impact was enduring. He shaped the worldview of a future president and, through him, the strategic posture of the United States in World War II and the early Cold War.
Where Harp’s influence is immediate, Conner’s was generational. Where Harp reinforces a leader’s instincts, Conner refined them. Where Harp’s role is personal, Conner’s was institutional. Harp is emblematic of personalist politics, in which loyalty and emotional resonance matter more than expertise. Conner is emblematic of the older republican ideal: the mentor who forms leaders capable of stewarding institutions larger than themselves.
The comparison is not a judgment of character but a study in political anthropology. Harp and Conner illuminate two radically different ways aides can shape leadership.
One model comforts the leader; the other forms him. One protects the leader’s present; the other prepares him for the future. In examining these two figures, we see not only the contrast between two aides but the contrast between two visions of leadership itself.
Joe Marlow is a theologian, historian, educator and writer now retired in South Lyon, Mich., with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two dogs.
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