Lynn Schmidt is a syndicated columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Democrats need a shot in the arm. No, not a vaccine, rather a dose of energy and enthusiasm.
If one considers Donald Trump, who is almost certainly going to be the 2024 GOP nominee and is certainly a threat to our democratic republic, then you know that the fate of our democracy remains in the hands of the Democratic Party. While President Biden defeated Trump in 2020, Biden is not going into 2024 with the strength needed to do it again.
A July New York Times/Siena Poll showed a tie between Biden and Trump, each with 43%, when respondents were asked if the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for. That the two men are tied should give all Americans who think Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election was disqualifying, great pause.
In the same poll when Democratic voters were asked if the Democratic Party should renominate Joe Biden as the party's candidate for president in 2024, 50% of Democrats said they should nominate someone else.
Even though Biden’s legislative successes are piling up the data shows that the economy is improving, Biden approval ratings are not. They remain steady at 40% and not getting better over time. Many blame this weak opinion of the president on his age, polarization, an even more unpopular vice-president, or a combination of all three.
I propose an additional theory: Biden seems unable to inspire the American people.
Could an aspirational leader, a younger Democrat, someone with political talent galvanize the electorate to find common ground, change the direction from the wrong track towards the right, and break up our hyperpolarized quagmire? It certainly seems quite feasible.
One such skillful politician, a Democratic backbencher, is former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu deserves to be brought up from the minors to the big leagues and be allowed to show the country what he’s got.
Landrieu served as the 61st Mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018 during which time he played a key role in helping the city rebound from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He previously served as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana from 2004 to 2010. In 2021 President Biden named Landrieu a Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Coordinator who is responsible for coordinating and implementing the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Beyond his impressive executive skills and resume, Landrieu may be most widely known for a speech he gave in May of 2017 when he removed the last of the city’s several Confederate monuments. Landrieu’s rhetoric was hopeful and nonjudgmental. Here are a couple, potent stanzas from the speech.
“And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.”
“This is however about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong. Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division and yes with violence.”
Landrieu’s words offered a promising future while not alienating those who disagree with him. They also illustrate his commitment to public service and his leadership style. It is also worth noting that he used the word “truth” 13 times in the speech.
Many presidents have brought the country together during crises with their moving oratory. Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address, Reagan’s Berlin Wall Speech, and George W. Bush’s Post-9/11 Speech comes to mind.
The country should be grateful to Biden for his leadership out of the pandemic and restoring normalcy to our civic discord. But it is important that the Democratic Party look towards the future and elevate a younger voice; an energetic leader with good communication skills, and an inspiring vision. Someone who can inspire a broad coalition plus add new voters. Someone like Landrieu.
The same poll as mentioned above shows there is about 14% of the electorate that is up for grabs. This section of the electorate tended towards Biden in 2020 but now are recoiling at the idea of voting for either Trump or Biden again and are even unsure of whether they should even vote at all in 2024. This group is up for the taking, for a leader with skills, talent, and vision.
A resounding win by a bold and visionary leader is what our nation needs to address the serious problems facing our nation.
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.