Caufield is a professor of Political Science at Drake University.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and the first woman to hold the post of speaker of the House, announced on Nov. 17, 2022, that she will step down from House leadership – and the speakership – after 15 years leading her party. Republicans scored a narrow victory over House Democrats in the midterm elections and will take over as the majority party in January, with Rep. Kevin McCarthy nominated by his GOP colleagues to lead them as the next speaker of the House, pending a vote of the full House in early January 2023.
“For me the hour’s come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,” Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor.
Second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president, the speaker occupies a central role in our national government. But what is it that a speaker actually does?
Most people think the speakership is a party office. It’s not. The speaker is selected by the full House membership, though the majority party’s voting power ensures that the role is occupied by one of their own.
From legislation to accounting
The speaker fills three primary roles.
First, they are the most visible and authoritative spokesperson for the majority party in the House. Speakers articulate an agenda and explain legislative action to other Washington officials as well as the public. They oversee House committee assignments and collaborate with the powerful House Rules Committee to structure floor debate.
Second, the speaker manages business on the floor and navigates legislative rules, structuring House debate in a way that will advantage their legislative priorities. Adherence to strict rules and procedures is necessary to overcome the difficulty of managing a large legislative body like the House of Representatives.
Third, the speaker oversees everything from accounting to procurement for the House.
Power ebbed and flowed
During the republic’s early years, the speakership gradually gained power. By 1910, Speaker Joe Cannon had centralized power to such an extent that many of his own party members rebelled. Power was redistributed to committees and lower-level party leaders.
By the 1970s, committees had gained such control over legislative outcomes that widespread reforms were adopted, which shifted power back to the speaker.
From 1977 to 1995, three successive Democratic speakers – Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jim Wright and Tom Foley – reinvigorated the speakership. They enlarged the party leadership structure, creating wider networks of loyalty among members of the majority party while strengthening support for their priorities.
Today, the role of the speaker is influenced especially by changes instituted by Speaker Newt Gingrich, who took the gavel after the 1994 elections.
Gingrich, a Republican, was overtly partisan in the role. He announced that, compared with past speakers, he was “essentially a political leader of a grassroots movement seeking to do nothing less than reshape the federal government along with the political culture of the nation.”
Since Gingrich’s tenure, speakers are often criticized as too partisan and too powerful, trampling minority party interests. But this is the nature of the job in today’s Washington.
This story was updated to reflect Nancy Pelosi’s announcement on Nov. 17, 2022, that she will not seek to be in the next congressional session’s Democratic Party leadership.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.