"He's too soft of a character to be our leader," seems to be grammatically correct. Or is it?

And if indeed it is syntactically correct, what's the plural form of the phrase if referring to two or more characters? "They are too soft of a character to be good candidates." —is this wrong?

Solution 1:

Garner, in Modern American Usage (p586) doesn't like of in such expressions:

Intrusive 'of': The word of often intrudes where it doesn't idiomatically belong, as in *not that big of a deal (read not that big a deal), *not too smart of a student (read not too smart a student)... .

Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (p680) typically takes a more nuanced approach, noting its frequent use in a variety of contexts. It concludes:

The only sure thing is that when normative usage writers encounter these idioms their reaction is to condemn. ... The only stricture on it is that it is a spoken idiom; you will not want to use it much in writing except of the personal kind.

Others here have suggested how the sentence could be formulated in the plural.