Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University. He previously clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.
The holiday season lends itself to wishful thinking. With that spirit in mind, I’m asking Santa to help the American people identify and elect a candidate willing to deliver this speech:
My fellow Americans,
I don’t have all the answers. The problems we face today cannot be solved by a couple of tweets nor by a single party. From artificial intelligence to zoonotic diseases, the threats to our well-being have picked up speed, increased in complexity and spread across borders. I wish simple solutions existed. I admit that I’m often as puzzled and surprised by the size and scale of the problems we face as you.
So, though I cannot promise you answers, I can make the following pledges: We will recruit the brightest experts from across America to help us monitor and understand the risks we face; we will collaborate and coordinate with our allies to ensure that the global community is acting in unison; and, we will update you quickly and honestly along the way.
You should also know that I’m going to make mistakes. Although I’m confident that we’re going to increase our capacity to study and solve problems, these policy issues are like Jenga pieces – moving one piece can have significant and unpredictable effects on the larger structure. In an ideal world, I could prevent my team from causing any structural instability; in our current world, wobbles and shakes are inevitable. I won’t hide those from you. Instead, I’ll let you know about missteps as quickly as I let you know about steps forward. In return, I plead for your patience. I know that’s a lot to ask for in an age of drone-delivered pizzas. Nevertheless, your trust is essential to this approach to governance.
I’m also going to have to make trade-offs – to pick winners and losers. This is the roughest part of my job. Though some decisions will have uncertain results, others will very clearly impact certain communities more so than others. Again, I’d much prefer to only make choices that increase the well-being of everyone. We don’t live in that world. I’ll tell you now that when I confront those trade-offs, I’m going to err on the side of our kids. Decisions made decades ago have fudged up the future. This generation and the ones that follow it will need all the help they can get to overcome the potholes we created and failed to cover.
At this point, I know I’ve lost some of you. For those still reading, thank you for bravely considering a different kind of politician. This campaign faces stiff headwinds; it’s akin to a sailboat launching in the middle of a hurricane. There’s a route through the storm, but getting there will require a lot of teamwork and a lot of discipline. I hope you’ll join my crew. I need you and I believe America needs our commitment to a better approach to solving our collective problems.
If you’re still on the fence about whether to join this cause, I urge you to consider how much the status quo has cost us. Our inclination to pick sides means we’re constantly operating at less than full speed. Our bias toward certainty means we’re failing to recognize the substantial uncertainty we face. Our acceptance of a stagnant system means we’re making complex policy problems even more difficult to address.
Let’s dare to learn together, to work together and to bring about a better future together.
Happy holidays.
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.