When you cover politics as I do, you find yourself around a lot of highly ambitious people. I don’t mind it. In fact, I like ambitious people. They’re energetic, trying to achieve big things, taking a big bite out of life. Their burning drive gives them the stamina they need to pursue their dreams year after year, and stamina is a vastly undervalued superpower if you want to contribute something to the world.

But, of course, ambition is both a blessing and a curse. Ambitious people are also more likely to be ruthless, manipulative, status-obsessed and so focused on worldly success that they become hollow inside. “Macbeth” is a play about a man who becomes a slave to ambition — that insatiable, destructive beast — which hardens, isolates and destroys him.

So the million-dollar questions are: How can you marshal ambition’s energies without being consumed by its insatiable demands? How do you live a driven life, seeking to achieve great things, without becoming a jerk?

Some sages say: Don’t even try. You can’t control ambition, so you should renounce it. Die to self. Abandon selfish desires and offer the world a pure and selfless love. This advice is not as unrealistic as it may seem. I’ve known many people who live utterly generous lives — serving the poor and the weak with great love without clamoring for applause. Their lives are wondrous to behold.

Unfortunately, many of us, and I include myself here, can’t seem to achieve that. Sad to say, my altruistic desires alone are not powerful enough to drive me through the hard labor required to do anything of note. If I’m going to get through the arduous work of, say, writing a book, I need to put my egotistic desires at the service of my loftier desires. I start the book hoping it will be helpful to people, but to propel me to work on it for years, I also need my name on the cover and the ego-pleasing possibility that readers might think I’m clever. In other words, if I’m going to be really driven, I need to harness both selfless and selfish motivations. I don’t scorn mixed motives; I live by them. I think a lot of us live this way.

Abraham Lincoln is the patron saint for those of us who hope to live well even in the grip of ambition. Lincoln’s law partner reported that “his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.” And yet one of Lincoln’s major speeches, the Lyceum Address of 1838, was about the danger of overweening ambition, and you get the impression he was very much worrying about his own.

Lincoln rode to the White House on that drive, but at every step along the way, you see him wrestling with his ambition, as if he were wrestling with a dangerous dragon. He was trying to ride his ambition to great heights without being consumed and corrupted by it. This struggle with your own ambition is a perilous enterprise — like Jacob wrestling with the angel.

I find I can better understand this struggle with the dragon of ambition if I break it down into five constituent struggles:

— The struggle between craft and reward.

In his 1941 novel, “What Makes Sammy Run?” Budd Schulberg describes a belligerently self-centered and ambitious man who makes it big as a screenwriter in Hollywood. The crucial fact about the main character, Sammy Glick, is that he doesn’t care at all about the craft of screenwriting; he only cares about the fame and money it can bring. So he plagiarizes, steals other people’s ideas, takes shortcuts, is delighted by a script that makes money even if it’s mediocre.

That’s a crucial distinction: How much are you driven by the intrinsic desire to be good at what you do? How much are you driven by the desire for extrinsic rewards like money and fame that being good can bring you? And most crucially, what is the ratio between these two motivations? I’d say if your intrinsic commitment to the craft isn’t dominant, by say 70-30, you’re on morally perilous ground. If you’re just doing it for the money and fame, you’re going to cut corners. You will lack a sense of calling and a true commitment to the vocation, and your lack of intrinsic passion will show up in your work and life.

— The struggle between gift love and need love.

In his book “The Four Loves,” C.S. Lewis observes that some of our loves emerge from a fullness and some emerge from a void. If somebody poured great love into you as a child and you want to pour great love into your neighbors, colleagues and products, that is gift love. Lewis gives the example of a character called Mrs. Fidget as an example of need love. She seems to be devoted to caring for her family. But she’s always boasting of her own sacrifices. She’s manipulative and controlling. She’s trying to fill a hole in her own heart, so her love is self-centered, not other-centered.

Gift love is essentially delighted with the world; need love is voracious, insatiable and laced with a fear of failure. Gift love fosters human connection; need love bends a person in on himself, and leads to isolation. If you’re wrestling with your ambition, it seems important to ask: From where does my ambition flow, from a sense of abundance or a sense of hollowness? People whose ambition is fueled by resentment (Richard Nixon and Donald Trump) are fueled by need love.

— The struggle between excellence and superiority.

Some people’s longings are noncomparative. If they are good at something, that satisfaction is its own reward. Other people’s longings are primarily competitive. It’s not enough for them to be good; they need to be better than. They need to come out on top of someone else.

Since we’re such nice people we’re going to tell ourselves that our longings are noncomparative. But despite these noble assertions, I notice there’s an awful lot of competitive striving for superiority in the world.

Our entire meritocracy is built around the striving for superiority. It’s not that you’re good; what matters is you’re ranked higher, you got into a more exclusive school. The social media world is a world of vicious ranking and comparison. A survey of almost 200 sociologists found that about half expected to become one of the 10 most important sociologists of their time. Not just good, but better than.

The world of noncomparative striving can be a world of mutual respect. On the other hand, a desire for superiority is zero-sum, nasty and drenched in envy. As Yale theologian Miroslav Volf writes in “The Cost of Ambition,” “Frustrated striving for superiority often seeks relief in the form of aggressive self-deception in which the superior is cast as morally deficient, arrogant and oppressive.” It’s not enough that I be built up; others must be torn down.

— The struggle between high and low desires.

The quality of your ambition will be shaped by the goal you’re ambitious for. As philosophers down the ages have noticed, if you hunger for power you will always feel powerless and fear treachery; if you hunger for approval you will always have to be people pleasing; if you hunger for money you will never have enough; but if you hunger for understanding, your world will always be filled with wonders; and if you hunger for God, you will be hungering for perfect love itself and your hunger, I believe, will be purified by that love.

We all instinctively know that some desires are morally superior to others. The longing for true friendship is higher than the longing for popularity; the longing for community is higher than the longing for a Porsche. And yet there is a perversity in each human heart that sometimes turns us into idolaters — that induces us to worship the lesser substitutes our culture tells us to worship rather than some ultimate good itself.

We want to love and be loved, which is a noble ambition, but we think we can get them by looking good, being in the know, being popular with the in crowd. Idolatry is an ultimate longing for a finite thing. Like all addictions, this form of miswanting demands more and more of a person, while offering less and less.

Be careful what you love, St. Augustine warned, because you end up turning into what you love. Moral life, he continued, is about getting your loves in the right order and wanting what is higher.

— Finally, the struggle between ambition and aspiration.

Ambition is the desire to rise higher in the world. Aspiration is the desire to become a better person in the world. The former is about social mobility, and the latter is about inner transformation.

As you can tell, I applaud ambition, but aspiration sounds a lot more important. It takes courage to build the kind of relationships you’ve never experienced before, to cultivate the kind of virtues you’ve never possessed before. The world doesn’t applaud you as much when you devote yourself to the inner sanctification rather than to outer impressiveness.

Aspiration demands that you renounce the merit badge life. After a few wasted years in college, Walter Kirn was stripped down to a place where he was tired of trying to get ahead; all he wanted to do was learn. He writes in his book “Lost in the Meritocracy”: “Alone in my room, congested and exhausted, I forgot my obsession with self-advancement. I wanted to lose myself. I wanted to read. Instead of filling in the blanks, I wanted to be a blank and be filled in.”

As I was finishing this column on the train I got a nervous text from my wife. She’s launching a big project, and she was about to send a mass email announcing it to the world. She mentioned that her ambitions for this project were clashing with her quietist desires to be a private person out of the spotlight. That sounds like exactly the kind of healthy internal struggle I was at that exact moment trying to describe. Professional success often comes from being wholehearted, from moving unreservedly after one goal. But the people we admire are often divided against themselves, burning hot with some ambition while trying to transcend the flames.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

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Today is Tuesday, July 29, the 210th day of 2025. There are 155 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 29, 1967, an accidental rocket launch on the deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 service members.

Also on this date:

In 1836, the newly completed Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated in Paris.

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In 1858, the United States and Japan signed the Harris Treaty, formalizing diplomatic relations and trading rights between the two countries.

In 1890, artist Vincent van Gogh, 37, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

In 1914, transcontinental telephone service in the U.S. became operational with the first test conversation between New York and San Francisco.

In 1921, Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.

In 1954, the first volume of JRR Tolkien’s novel “The Lord of the Rings” (“The Fellowship of the Ring”) was published.

In 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency was established.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA.

In 1981, Britain’s Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a glittering ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. (They divorced in 1996.)

In 1986, a federal jury in New York found that the National Football League had committed an antitrust violation against the rival United States Football League, but the jury ordered the NFL to pay token damages of just three dollars.

In 1994, abortion opponent Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Bayard Britton and Britton’s escort, James H. Barrett, outside the Ladies Center clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

In 1999, a former day trader, apparently upset over stock losses, opened fire in two Atlanta brokerage offices, killing nine people and wounding 13 before shooting himself; authorities said Mark O. Barton had also killed his wife and two children.

In 2016, former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson was given an additional 40 years in prison for trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who put him behind bars for killing his third wife.

In 2021, American Sunisa Lee won the gold medal in women’s all-around gymnastics at the Tokyo Games; she was the fifth straight American woman to claim the Olympic title in the event.

Today’s Birthdays:

Former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum-Baker is 93.
Former Sen. Elizabeth H. Dole is 89.
Artist Jenny Holzer is 75.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is 72.
Style guru Tim Gunn is 72.
Rock singer-musician Geddy Lee (Rush) is 72.
Rock singer Patti Scialfa (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band) is 72.
Actor Alexandra Paul is 62.
Country singer Martina McBride is 59.
Actor Wil Wheaton is 53.
R&B singer Wanya Morris (Boyz II Men) is 52.
Actor Stephen Dorff is 52.
Actor Josh Radnor is 51.
Hip-hop DJ/music producer Danger Mouse is 48.
NFL quarterback Dak Prescott is 32.

As he conducted his postgame media availability, Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson referred back to a sheet of paper with many of his teammates’ names written on it. So many different players contributed to Tuesday night’s win, and the starting pitcher didn’t want to forget any of them.

“It took everybody today,” he said, listing nine names. “Even if we had a long-(expletive) rain delay. Excuse my French. It was a good win.”

That it was.

Hours after the Twins traded starting pitcher to Chris Paddack, the first move in what could be a busy week ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline, they stormed back in the ninth inning using a Brooks Lee two-run, walk-off single for a 5-4 win over the Boston Red Sox after waiting out an hour and a half rain delay in the middle of the ninth inning at Target Field.

“To be able to focus and play just a really good ballgame, to challenge guys in different spots and watch them come through, you have to want it,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s a challenging day saying goodbye to a guy that you care about that’s done good work for us in Paddy, but watching guys step up on a day that’s kind of an emotional day is great.”

Lee’s single, which came after he fell behind 0-2 in the count, brought home Mickey Gasper and Willi Castro, who was hot on Gasper’s heels, to erase Boston’s advantage, one that it had gained in the top of the ninth. That was mere minutes before the wind started picking up, whipping trash on the field, and it started pouring with lightning bolts illuminating the sky over the ballpark.

The Twins (51-55) needed just a few minutes after the long delay to come back.

DaShawn Keirsey Jr. got them started with a single to lead off the inning. Gasper walked right after him, and then Castro was hit by a pitch, loading the bases for the third time in the game. Carlos Correa then hit a ground ball to third and Keirsey was thrown out at home, bringing Lee to the plate to play a starring role.

Down Byron Buxton, who was on the bench with cartilage irritation, and Ryan Jeffers, who is on paternity leave, the Twins still came through when it mattered most.

“We still knew we were going to play at some point (Monday night),” Lee said after collecting his third walk-off hit of the season. “Those are the times when you come together and figure it out, and we have baseball players to do that.”

The late-inning dramatics came after the Twins and Red Sox (57-51)  traded leads earlier in the game.

Keirsey broke open a scoreless game in the third inning with his second home run of the season, after which he noted he felt Paddack’s absence as he came back to the dugout and noticed the starting pitcher wasn’t waiting on the top step as usual to place the team’s celebratory helmet on his head.

The Twins were then unable to take advantage of a bases-loaded, no-out situation an inning earlier, allowing the Red Sox to hang around.

An Alex Bregman three-run home run off Woods Richardson, who had navigated out of trouble in three of the previous four innings, completed a big momentum swing and gave Boston its first lead of the night.

The Twins tied it up in the sixth, thanks in part to some wildness from reliever Jorge Alcala, and the score remained that way until the ninth.

“I think it just goes to show the guys we have in this locker room, rallying together,” Keirsey said.

As changes to Medicaid funding and enrollment requirements come into effect over the next few years, the Minnesota Department of Human Services estimates that 140,000 Minnesotans will lose their coverage, officials said Monday.

“That’s about 12% of current program enrollment,” said John Connolly, state Medicaid director and DHS deputy commissioner.

The state’s latest analysis of the impacts of the sweeping Republican-authored tax and spending bill, signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, predicts that, over the next four years, Minnesota will lose $1.4 billion in federal funding.

“We actually expect those losses to get bigger over time, as well,” Connolly said.

Medicaid — which in Minnesota is called Medical Assistance — is a state-federal health insurance program for lower-income Americans, particularly children, disabled adults and those who are pregnant. Some states, including Minnesota, have expanded Medicaid access for adults whose incomes are no more than 138% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.

Two provisions in the federal bill will result in loss of Medicaid coverage, Connolly said. One is the new community engagement requirement, set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2027. Certain enrolled adults (under age 65, with no children or disabilities) must report at least 80 hours per month spent working, doing community service or seeking employment.

“We at DHS call this a work reporting requirement, because the large majority of people who are working age in the Medicaid program, presently, work or will be exempt from the work reporting requirement,” Connolly said. “The new requirement, ultimately, here is the reporting part.”

The other provision that is expected to lead to disenrollment is more frequent eligibility renewals. Instead of reviewing one’s Medicaid eligibility every 12 months, beginning Dec. 31, 2026, Medicaid recipients must submit documents every six months to verify that they qualify for coverage.

“This increases churn in the program, meaning that people will lose coverage because they can’t complete the paperwork (though they) may be eligible,” Connolly said.

Those covered under expanded Medicaid could see “the majority of the impact” of disenrollment, Connolly said, as they are subject to the new eligibility renewal and work reporting policies.

Those additional requirements will come at a higher cost for county and tribal governments, which process those documents.

“We expect that impact actually could be, at minimum, $160 million,” Connolly said. “They’ll have to leverage a bunch of new and different data sources that they may not be assessing right now, in addition to paper-based information, which is labor-intensive.”

DHS also estimates that hospitals will have to cover more uncompensated health care as the result of two other provisions in the bill: reduced Emergency Medical Assistance funding and a shorter retroactive coverage period.

“Retroactive coverage is for people who come in for care without health insurance, but are and have been eligible for Medicaid,” Connolly said. “Once they’re enrolled, Medicaid can cover care they received within the past 90 days.”

But starting in 2027, that retroactive period will only be one month for adults without children and two months for other Medicaid recipients. DHS estimates that change will lead to $31 million fewer federal dollars and a $9 million reduction in state spending each year.

While many changes to Medicaid are scheduled to take effect in the coming years, one immediate effect is a one-year prohibition on Medicaid funding for reproductive health care providers that perform abortions. In Minnesota, that amounts to $154 million less in fiscal year 2026.

On Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts indefinitely blocked the Trump administration from enforcing the policy, which mainly affects Planned Parenthood clinics.

How the projected loss of federal Medicaid dollars will affect the state’s budget, Connolly said, is still being measured. Facing a future shortfall, Minnesota lawmakers, in June, passed their 2026-27 budget with some cuts, including $300 million from the human services budget. The budget also rolls back MinnesotaCare coverage for undocumented adults.

“We’re still analyzing certain elements of the law and what their impact on the state budget could be,” Connolly said.

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