Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
Sherlock Holmes’ statement,“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,” in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A study in Scarlet,” is a pearl of wisdom to use when thinking about America’s political future.
The following data applies to the Nov. 5, 2024 presidential election notion that Donald Trump and Joe Biden are too old to be president.
First, according to a Nov. 10-14 Morning Consult poll, 65% of Americans don’t want Biden `OR’ Trump to run again. Likewise, the Nov. 26-30, 2022 CNBC All-America Economic Survey found 61% of the public think Trump should not seek the presidency and 70% say the same about Biden.
Second, in a fall 2022 Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, 60% of Americans would consider voting for a moderate independent if Biden and Trump were seeking office.
The data is quite consistent regarding electorate thoughts of Trump and Biden’s presidential future. It gets worse.
According to a Media voting exit poll on Nov. 8, 2022, only 44% of the respondents had a “favorable” opinion of the Democratic Party as well as of the Republican Party. Political party perceptions are hurting.
Karl Rove, a GOP consultant and contributor to the conservative Wall Street Journal stated, “… Americans may believe they can do better than a 78-year-old Republican and a nearly 82-year-old Democrat holding a rematch” (The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2022).
In reference to age, longitudinal research indicates that cognitive deterioration typically accelerates in one’s 70’s (Aartsen, et al, Journal of Gerontology, 2002). Both Trump and Biden are united in dotage, along with 26 Senators and 76 in the House of Representatives.
Take note of Derek Thompson’s comments from his article (Why do such elderly people run America?) that was published in The Atlantic, “... old governance can be bad governance. … it seems risky to leave the most important issues of life, death or welfare in the hands of a group of septuagenarians who are in the crosshairs of biologically predictable cognitive decline” (March 5, 2020).
The four databases plus a reality therapy understanding of cognitive decline and the importance of presidents making wise decisions strongly suggests it is time to seek presidential candidates under the age of 70. Let’s examine the GOP and Democrats’ presidential candidate bench.
The under age 70 Republicans who have hinted of wanting to be president include: Greg Abbott, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Brian Kemp, Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Chris Sununu and Glenn Younkin. GOP presidential wannabes over 70-years-old include John Bolton, Mike DeWine, Asa Hutchinson, Rick Scott and Donald Trump.
On the Democrats’ side, the potential under 70-year-old presidential candidate pool might include: Stacey Abrams, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Ro Khanna, Amy Klobuchar, J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer. The over age 70 Democrat presidential hopefuls include Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Brookings Institution senior fellow and Wall Street Journal contributor William Galston noted “a 2024 rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump would feature two of the least popular presidential candidates in modern history—even within their own parties. If 2024 were a rerun of 2020, 58% of voters say that they would `consider’ a `moderate independent presidential candidate” (Aug. 12, 2022, Brookings). Galston’s data reference is similar to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll cited earlier.
In 2022, dozens of former Republicans and Democrats created a new centrist-based party, called Forward. Some interesting moderate presidential candidates could include Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, David Jolly, John Kasich, Christine Todd Whitman or Andrew Yang.
The 2024 presidential race is in full swing. It’s going to be a wild ride for Republicans, Democrats and the Forward Party, let alone the voters.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.