After college at Longwood University and before law school at Catholic University, Mike Burns spent four years getting a first-hand look at what it takes to get people to vote. He managed Gerry Connelly's 2007 campaign for re-election to lead the biggest county in the Northern Virginia suburbs, a year before the Democrat won his seat in Congress. Then he became executive director of the Fairfax County Democratic Party. Now, rather than running campaigns, he's working to help more students vote as national director of the Fair Elections Center's Campus Vote Project. His answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What's the tweet-length description of your organization?
We work with universities, community colleges, faculty, students and election officials to reduce barriers to student voting. Our goal is to help campuses institutionalize reforms that empower students with the information they need to register and vote.
Describe your very first civic engagement.
When I was in high school, we had a history-government class requirement that you had to complete a certain number of hours engaging in the political process. I put up signs for a candidate: Barry for Sheriff. I remember because my best friend's name was Barry and we got a real kick out of this. I attended some debates and forums for local elections, distributed campaign literature door-to-door and made phone calls for a state House race. I did not realize it at the time, but I see now it is an ingenious way to introduce young people not just to the offices, candidates and issues — but also to how they engage with the local community.
What was your biggest professional triumph?
I feel particularly proud whenever a young person who has worked with us goes on to do amazing things. Campus Vote Project has built is always looking to improve the leadership development of the student leaders we engage in this work. I could not be prouder that we have hired two of them as full-time staff. This is essentially my retirement strategy. As we keep creating leadership stepping stones, eventually someone who started out in a student role with CVP will take over my position in the national office.
And your most disappointing setback?
Every time I read a headline that says young people are "apathetic" or portrays them as non-voters. Young people have always been at the center of social movements in this country — from the civil rights and anti-war movements of yesterday to the March for Our Lives and climate change activism of today. I have the privilege of working with students at the forefront of the continuing fight for voting rights and a democracy that includes everyone. And it disappoints me when older folks in positions of power distort this narrative instead of showcasing young leaders and working to build them up.
How does your identity influence the way you go about your work?
I am a middle-aged white guy with a law degree so I have to be cognizant of that privilege every day in my job. I am constantly amazed by the tremendous CVP staff and our student Democracy Fellows and the array of identities, backgrounds and lived experiences they bring to our efforts. As a manager of such a diverse group, it is incumbent on me to continually learn and make space for us as an organization to go beyond just diversity and address equity and inclusion.
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Hope for the best and plan for the worst. After law school I regularly took to describing myself as not "risk averse," but just "very risk aware." The corollary to this is that I think my staff is probably sick of me using the phrase "How do we set them up for success?" every time we plan something new.
Create a new flavor for Ben & Jerry's.
Healthy DemocraSea — chocolate fro-yo with sea salt and caramel.
What's your favorite political movie or TV show?
"Veep." It was laugh out loud funny because all the jokes and bits started with a kernel of truth and then took them to their absurd extreme. Unfortunately, our current political climate has also taken itself to such extremes that they could no longer come up with new material that would still be funny.
What's the last thing you do on your phone at night?
I have an 11-week-old son, and we track on an app how much he eats, sleeps and does other things. So usually the last thing is listening to a podcast with my headphones while I put his nighttime feeding into the app.
What is your deepest, darkest secret?
Oh my. I am an unabashed voting rights activist who constantly works to convince young people and students that their vote matters. But I do not have a perfect voting record. I have a December birthday so I just missed my first chance to participate in an election at the end of high school. But in Virginia there are elections every year — state and local in the odd-years along with federal in even years. And my first year of college was an off-off year in Virginia — i.e. no statewide races for governor, lieutenant governor or attorney general, just state legislature and local. I totally missed this and did not think to get an absentee ballot and vote until the following year when it was a presidential election. I started working on campaigns and for voting rights ever since to make up for this.
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.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.