Tied to your party's platform. Tied to your party's primary voters. Tied to your party's donors. Tied to your party's leaders. And, of course, tied to your consultants so you can get re-elected.
Our politicians come with a lot of strings attached. Even the most fervent good-governance advocates, such as Stacey Abrams, fall short of acknowledging that even with full voter participation, our system binds and biases politicians from being truly free to represent their constituents.
Closed primaries, for instance, bind politicians to prioritize their partisan primary voters above all other voices. The typical U.S. House member has to be especially attentive to this audience because every two years their job is in the hands of these ideologically extreme individuals. Good-governance advocates could champion open primaries and/or independent redistricting commissions as a means to increase the "value" of votes from the general electorate. However, such reforms would diminish the power of the two major parties and not even people like Abrams dare cross their party's influence.
Seemingly unlimited influence from major donors similarly binds politicians. Money is even more powerful than votes in our current democracy, as pointed out by Katherine Gehl of the Institute for Political Innovation. Once a politician locks up enough votes to get through their primary and the general, there's no incentive to push for more votes. More money, on the other hand, is always useful because those dollars can be shared with other party members — helping make you a kingmaker and, thereby, move you up the party ranks. So if a donor wants a politician or their party to go in a certain direction, the odds are they'll find a way to pivot in that direction.
Ultra vires partisan structures within Congress and our state legislatures similarly bind politicians. The decision to grant partisan leaders power over things like committee assignments means politicians are rewarded for being good party soldiers.
Finally, the normalization of career politicians — endlessly seeking another term — means politicians are beholden to their consultants. They pollsters, social media planners, etc. make sure politicians never get too close to going against the grain. These creatures of the partisan industrial complex help everything stay within the party-approved lines.
All of these strings have left the American people with puppets for politicians at a time when we need public servants. All of the incentives encourage politicians to become captured, so we need a generation of public servants with enough of a moral compass to step up, serve, then step aside. These no-strings-attached public servants can pass legislation that's costly in the short run to create a better future. These uncaptured public servants can shun special interests and focus first on what's best for their constituents. These short-term politicians can stop contributing to the partisan industrial complex and actually spend their terms governing, rather than dialing for dollars.
It's a worthy aspiration to make it as easy as possible for people to vote. But so long as money is more valuable than votes and primary votes are more valuable than "normal" votes, full participation would be a pyrrhic victory.
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.