The Leader is *the* key role in fascism, but it seems to work differently in American fascism, perhaps because of an individualist tradition.
In traditional fascism, the Leader channels the individual virtue and wisdom of the Volk. Though not elected, he is their ultimate representative. In a sense, the Leader gathers correctness and wisdom from the inchoate spirit of his people. It flows upward to him and then back downward through the hierarchy.
American fascism dispenses with the upward flow. Correct thought and correct decisions originate directly within the Leader.
The Volk are virtuous, but the Leader's virtue is sui generis.
The US being a mongrel nation without an organic history ("our people have lived on this land forever") probably makes it harder to think of the Volk as a semi-mystical agent with causal power and an eternal identity. We don't even have our own language, just this crazy mashup of different language traditions, so we can't do the Heideggerian thing of considering our native tongue as somehow **the** only language one can do good philosophy in (now that classical Greek is no longer with us). (Heidegger on German 
)