Kevin Frazier is a student at the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Ravel, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, is a member of the International Comitê Scientifico working on solutions to strengthen electoral justice.
Countries from around the world are rightfully skeptical of learning anything other than what not to do when they come to the United States for the first gathering of the Summit for Democracy this week. When it comes to identifying strategies to make democracies more resilient and inclusive, U.S. officials should take the role of learner rather than lecturer, of attendee rather than host.
By hosting this summit, President Biden must think it’s appropriate for our flawed and floundering democracy to assume the leadership role on the issues facing our democracies. Yet, our nation’s democracy is “ backsliding,” according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. That slide did not stop when Donald Trump left the White House, despite it being a priority for the current administration to restore our democracy.
“Since day one,” according to the State Department, “the Biden-Harris Administration has made clear that revitalizing democracy in the United States and around the world is essential to delivering for the American people and meeting the unprecedented challenges of our time.” To truly revitalize America’s democracy, the Biden Administration should be studying best practices abroad and giving the stage to the nations that are actively implementing those practices.
Attendees to the summit must doubt they’ll learn much given America’s diminished democratic standing. The skepticism that each attendee brings along will determine the value of the gatherings: the first, this December; the second, a year later. After the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, the world’s perception of America’s democracy forever changed. Nothing in the ensuing months has assuaged worldwide worries that America’s democratic health is waning.
It’s wrong to think that American democracy is just going through a head cold. When a country’s elections have rules that prioritize partisan and special interests, when U.S. electoral participation trails behind other countries year after year, and when millions question the legitimacy and authority of their government, more is required than rest and fluids. Democratic nations around the world have rightfully diagnosed that this country needs substantial rehabilitation to ever get close to realizing its democratic aspirations.
By attending, rather than hosting, the proposed summit, U.S. officials will be in a far better place to learn new strategies to remedy our democratic backsliding. Innovative democratic reforms are in place around the world. U.S. officials should see these reforms on the ground to understand how they could translate to a U.S. context. Even going across the southern border and spending time in Mexico would reveal lessons in democratic resilience and improvement.
While the U.S. struggles to make its electorate representative, Mexican officials have gone a step further: ensuring that their legislative bodies, executive branch and courts include the full spectrum and diversity of Mexican society. Thanks to a democratic culture and electoral bodies that insist on assuring “ gender parity in everything,” rather than hoping for diversity, Mexico’s lower house of Congress now includes 250 female officials amid a 500-person body. The U.S. should be studying how a country maligned for machismo could take on the substantive constitutional reform that made gender parity possible, and is striving toward parity for Black LGBTQ and indigenous Mexicans.
Some would say that the upcoming summit could impart these lessons on America, despite being hosted by the United States. In theory, they’re right. In practice, acting as the host inhibits our ability to humbly listen and implement the strategies of other nations. We’re setting the agenda. We’re sending out the invites. We’re finalizing the goals. All of these actions mean that U.S. officials will miss out on doing the hard work of critically assessing and then improving our democratic systems.
These improvements cannot be further delayed. With elections in 2022 and 2024 right around the corner, global residents and Americans themselves are increasingly worried that violence, misinformation and hyper-partisanship will continue to define the U.S. democracy. These worries will not disappear as a result of this summit. The resulting photo ops, reports and press releases will do nothing to create the sort of cultural change required to jumpstart our collective democratic imagination. The revival of democratic spirits in Mexico came about because actual change was on the horizon – the possibility of a truly representative Congress. Americans need to see that substantive change rather than more summits are on the administration’s agenda.
It’s debatable if the U.S. was ever a “city on the hill” with respect to running an inclusive, participatory and pragmatic democracy. Whatever light we emanated has been extinguished: shaded by dark money, blocked by partisan powers and citizens who don’t believe the truth, and hindered by unresolved racial injustices. Rather than perpetuate a narrative of our country as a beacon of democratic hope, despite the world shuddering while watching the insurrection, President Biden should cancel the Summit and examine how the rest of the world is remedying their democracies for “the unprecedented challenges of our time.”
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.