Do you perhaps mean "would-be," with a hyphen? Both sentences (with and without the hyphen between "would" and "be") are grammatical, but have different meanings.
Nice opinion piece - but where does the essay-within-an-essay by Isaac Asimov actually end, and your opinion piece resume?
Regards,
Asimov ends at this point:
Isaac Asimov, March 1991
I should have used some HTML, i.e., italics, bold, etc. Laziness; my bad.
And you’re right. Would-be would’ve been a better choice.