View from here: The man in the arena
Doug Burgum, the new secretary of the Interior, is a man shaped by the land. The Badlands of North Dakota are more than a scenic backdrop for him. They're where, in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt's old stomping grounds, he has staked both his political identity and his legacy. The new presidential library rising from the hills outside Medora is the clearest monument to that ambition: a temple to Roosevelt, yes, but also to the idea that conservation, grit, and frontier optimism are not relics of the past but still guiding lights.
A tech entrepreneur turned Republican governor, Burgum briefly tried on the role of presidential candidate, speaking less about the culture wars than about energy policy and artificial intelligence. As Interior secretary, he is now the steward of a half-billion acres of federal land, in a moment when fights over public resources are reaching a fever pitch.
Burgum sits at the nexus of those conversations: climate, energy, water, development, and the always-fraught question of federal land management. He inherits a region in flux, where drought and boomtown growth collide, and where historic tensions between states and the feds are once again simmering.
But what stands out in contributing writer Sam Benson's cover story is less Burgum's résumé and more his reverence for the land and its history. He's the kind of person who can recite Roosevelt's 'Man in the Arena' speech from memory. He reads the landscape not only as terrain but as inheritance. He seems to believe — and not cynically — that America is still capable of big, shared projects. That we can still build libraries in the open air. That we can still protect something, together.
That idea may feel increasingly rare in our politics, where shared purpose has been replaced with grievance, and where the interior — of the country, and of our national character — often feels like contested ground.
It's worth remembering that Roosevelt went West after devastating personal loss, and came back with a new sense of self and of service. 'The romance of my life began' in North Dakota, he wrote. Maybe, in some ways, Burgum believes the same. Maybe he sees in the West not only a test of resources, but a test of national imagination.
At its best, the American West has always offered more than open space and natural resources. It has offered perspective — sometimes humbling, sometimes clarifying. We see it in the solitude of the desert, in the enormity of the sky, in the mountain peaks in Zion and Yosemite. In these places, in quiet moments, we remember what it means to take the long view. To be, in Roosevelt's words, the one 'in the arena,' muddy and bruised, but still choosing to fight.
This story appears in the May 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.
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