Surely Steve Rogers Won't Let Power Corrupt

Do you think we need to be worried about Steve Rogers? He's this sort of top cop, leader of all superheroes position now, and I wonder if it's taking a negative toll.

The thing that started me thinking this was near the end of Hawkeye and Mockingbird #6. Steve's trying to snap Hawkeye out of a funk. Clint's lacking confidence since he maimed Crossfire, and Rogers basically browbeat him out of it. That's fine, I tend to think of Steve Rogers as being the type to resort to an uplifting pep talk more than a kick in the pants, but he's worked with Hawkeye for a long time, he knows the right approach.

What worried me was that he did it to so Hawkeye could be in the right mindset to rejoin Mockingbird's group. Steve's reasoning is 'they're a group we can use, as long as they're staying on the level.' When asked if that means he wants Hawkeye to be a mole, Steve deflects, saying he needs Clint, and not just as an Avenger. He doesn't come off as terribly concerned with whether Hawkeye can keep Bobbi out of the downward spiral he fears she's fallen into, saying 'That's between the two of you.' It feels pretty dispassionate for the former Captain America.

Reading the first issue of She-Hulks, Bruce Banner says he wants Jennifer Walters and Lyra to live in New York, rather than at the Gamma Base with him, so that all the Hulks aren't in the same place if Rogers decides the world's better off without them. Perhaps Banner's paranoid, but he has reason to be after his buddies decided to shoot him off into space. Steve Rogers wasn't involved in that, but he has more authority at his disposal if he came to a similar conclusion.

Admittedly, it's only two things, and neither was in a book Rogers figures prominently in. McCann and Wilcox could be taking cues from how he's being portrayed in books where he is a major character, though. I know he's asked for the support of tons of heroes, if those opening pages of Avengers were any indication. He set up a secret Avengers group, for reasons I'm unclear on*, which includes a character like Eric O'Grady, who is of questionable morality at best. There's the Avengers Academy, which Pym runs but I assume has at least Steve's support, with teenagers damaged by Osborn, who could be heroes, but might be villains. The positive outlook is these are attempts to encourage these characters (the Academy kids, O'Grady) to choose to fight for good. The darker outlook, it's a way to keep an eye on them, to have them close by to squash if they cause too much damage if they go bad.

Part of my concern is the last two characters in this sort of position didn't do such a stellar job. of course, they were Tony Stark and Norman Osborn. Norman's a criminal scumbag lunatic, and Stark is the type who seems to believe the ends justify the means, but has no set guidelines on what's right or wrong. If it's right to protect his secret identity, he has a satellite to remove the knowledge from everyone's minds. If it's right to register said secret identity with the government, better do it or Papa Stark will kick your butt and take away your powers.

Rogers has generally been portrayed as having a set of principles he maintains. But he's never been in a position of actual authority quite like this. He's lead the Avengers at times, worked for SHIELD, but this is more far-reaching, and a little different. There's more pressure, and I wonder if his principles wouldn't start to bend some under the demands of the job. It can be as simple (on a meta-level) as his principles shifting with different writers. I don't think Brubaker's Steve Rogers is the same as Mark Gruenwald's. I don't know where Brubaker's Steve Rogers stands on killing, but he seems less bothered with using guns than Gruenwald's did. Things change, situations faced change, maybe the character changes, too. Plus there's the fact he's not Captain America anymore, not the symbol of the American spirit/will/people. He could figure that while there are things Captain America shouldn't do, Steve Rogers can do those. That's a little concerning, since it could be read he didn't necessarily believe in the ideals he espoused as Cap, but adopted them strictly because he felt the position demanded it.

My biggest concern is authority figures in the Marvel Universe almost inevitably end up either being corrupt, or being corrupted by their position. If they weren't evil to begin with, they were manipulated by someone who was, or they did some questionable stuff because they felt the situation demanded it (Xavier leaps to mind there). So the odds are against Steve Rogers not suffering the same fate.

* Is it a proactive team, or one designed to deal with ugly threats he'd prefer never reach the light of day, or public awareness?