No Labels, one of the most prominent nonprofits focused on bolstering bipartisanship in Washington as the prime cure for the ailing democracy, is wading in to the presidential race this weekend.
And it's hoping the effort goes better than last time, when the group helped propel candidate Donald Trump with its seal of approval as a "problem solver" and took it on the chin from most all the other forces in the world of democracy reform.
Nothing approaching that sort of endorsement is in the offing Sunday afternoon, when 1,200 voters are expected at a No Labels gathering in New Hampshire but only a handful of second-tier and iconoclastic presidential candidates are expected to make pitches for their support: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland and motivational author Marianne Williamson among the Democrats and former Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts the only Republican.
Organizers will conduct a straw poll of attendees at the end of the day, with the balloting not limited to those who have traveled to Manchester. The result could offer a small clue about which candidates are positioned to capture the nation's small but potentially dispositive clutch of centrist voters not loyal to either major party, the sort No Labelsattracts.
"No Labels believes the candidate who can best articulate their ability to be a 'problem solver' will ultimately capture the imagination of the public," the group said in announcing the gathering.
The president will not be there. When he attended the group's gathering in New Hampshire four years ago, he was roundly criticized by attendees for a combative 40-minute address focused on running down his GOP rivals, denigrating the Democrats and trumpeting the virtues of winning hard-knuckled negotiations rather than collaborating. While he promised to become "much less divisive" in the future, he then added: "Always remember this: I never start anything. I simply counterpunch."
Nonetheless, he was one of the five GOP presidential candidates to get labeled as a "problem solver" a few weeks before winning the state's first-in-the-nation 2016 primary, a victory that accelerated his march toward the Republican nomination.
Although by that time his candidacy was already known best for such combative and polarizing ideas as a border wall and a ban on Muslims entering the country, he and the others earned the No Labels blessing by signing a pledge promising to push bipartisan legislation that would assure the solvency of Medicare and Social Security through the end of the century, balance the federal budget by 2030, make the country "energy secure" by 2024 and create 25 million jobs over a decade.
Since winning the election, Trump has put his weight behind no efforts to address any of the first three challenges. So far in his presidency the economy has created about 6 million jobs, but many economists steer clear of crediting the president's signature 2017 tax cut.
The four-part pledge was widely ridiculed by most of the other similarly well-known and well-funded democracy reform groups. They contend No Labels wrongly puts too much emphasis on electing and promoting people in the ideological middle — wrongly believing that's the magic formula for sopping up the partisanship, divisiveness and incivility that have clogged the capital's policymaking wheels.
Instead, the other groups say systemic changes, mainly to reduce the influence of money in politics and boost competitiveness in legislative elections, are the best way to restore the policy-making system to good working order for the long haul.
Still, No Labels has claimed some significant wins since enduring all the criticism for its role in the rise of Trump.
The next year it created an organization of congressional allies, dubbed the Problem Solvers Caucus, which takes pains to keep its membership precisely equal among Democrats and Republicans. The group used its muscle to extract some changes in House rules this year designed to promote more bipartisan legislation. The most important is a procedure allowing bills sponsored by two-thirds of members (guaranteeing support from plenty in both parties) a floor vote even if the leadership doesn't like the legislation.
Last month No Labels released its set of "bold ideas to rebuild our democracy," including term limits for Supreme Court justices and a return of "earmarks," the line items dedicating spending for parochial projects that members were long allowed to insert in spending bills — on the assumption all the members who had won earmarks would vote for the underlying budgets and thereby ensure shutdowns would never happen.
This month the groups plans to publish "101 Nonpartisan Solutions to All the Issues that Matter," which seeks to educate the voters of 2020 in a non-polarizing way on the big issues of the day, from health care and gun control to climate change and transportation.
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.