When Graham Platner’s senate campaign imploded last month, the first thing that came to mind was a comment by one of his campaign strategists, who also advises many other major political figures today. They said, “Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats… they want people who do not look and sound like the vat-grown people who’ve been leading this country off the cliff for the past century.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic primary for a Michigan Senate seat has been defined by candidates endlessly taking shots and hurling insults at each another. If recent history is a guide, things will only get nastier and more divisive in Michigan and elsewhere from here until November.
It’s all playing out against a backdrop of voices claiming Americans want a different kind of politician right now: “fighters.” Indeed, the Platner campaign staffer also said many Americans are willing to overlook personal integrity and other key values if they think their “fighter” can win.
It’s a dangerous bargain. It’s also dead wrong.
I’ve written before how I believe Americans are stuck in a fight or flight mode. They’re disgusted that their concerns are being ignored. They’re angry, exhausted, even disoriented by all the acrimony, division, and noise engulfing politics right now. When you're in that headspace, it’s natural to gravitate toward candidates who come out swinging and embrace a “take no prisoners” approach.
It is leading candidates and their consultants to raise money off of fear, stoke Americans’ anxieties for their own gain, and seek to win at all costs. We can’t go on like this.
Some will no doubt note how today’s political fights pale in comparison to the kind of campaigns that riddle American history right back to our founding. The elections of 1800 and 1828 must rank as some of the nastiest and most divisive elections in history. But history isn’t destiny. Nor did earlier campaigns contend with 24/7 news, social media, and AI.
Part of being American is having aspirations and striving toward ideals. It can seem that Americans have given up on those ideals and are giving in to an “anything goes” approach. But based on my travels across the country, they have not.
There’s a better way.
Some two decades ago, The Harwood Institute, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, deeply engaged Americans nationwide—from Baltimore to Louisville to Fresno—around the question, “What are your aspirations for our politics?” When it came to political candidates, Americans named these five factors:
- Tell us who you are—tell us what inspires you to seek office, what your values are, who supports you and why, and about your past.
- Know us—genuinely know how people in your community live and the challenges they face; show a deep understanding of people and their concerns.
- Explain where you stand—offer a vision for what you want to achieve and why, without overblown promises, and put the tough issues and trade-offs on the table.
- Be forthright—tell us what you’re about from the start and take on questions and challengers in direct, honest, straightforward ways.
- Set the right tone—pursue a tone that is respectful, not mean-spirited or negative.
These are different from simply saying we need more civility in public discourse; and no one should confuse them with the kind of kumbayah politics that some groups promote. Americans told us they wanted tough-minded, give-and-take campaigns, but ones that focused on what matters to them and strengthened our civic culture.
We turned these aspirations into a “Political Conduct Barometer” that people all across the country used as a type of scorecard to measure whether or not candidates were meeting their aspirations and contributing to a more productive culture.
Let me be clear: the vast majority of politicians today would fail the political conduct test on every measure. The thing is, as I’ve crisscrossed the country engaging Americans of all political persuasions, these five factors, while being obscured by all the current noise, remain people’s aspirations for political conduct today.
Platner’s strategist was right about one thing: people are looking for something different. They just deserve better than swapping one kind of inauthenticity for another.
Now is not the time to surrender to a politics that further destroys hope and will indeed lead us off the cliff. People’s yearning for a different political culture in this country grows by the day. We cannot let politicians and their consultants take our politics hostage. Americans want something better.
Rich Harwood is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute.
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.