Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
It is useful to think about the presidential election with a framework that emphasizes the old tension between isolationism and interventionism.
In many ways, the Republicans represent the isolationist camp, and the Democrats represent the interventionist camp. Of course, the exact words that are used to label the camps will not be satisfactory to everyone: right vs. left, libertarian vs. progressive, individualist vs. communitarian. Yet the old isolationist/interventionist theme has divided the nation for nearly 250 years.
Since its founding, America has struggled with the desire among some to be isolated from the rest of the world and the desire among others to be integrated with the rest of the world. We were, in the early years of the republic, quite isolated from the rest of the world by virtue of our geographic location. The colonists left the Old World to get away from it and were determined, and the revolutionaries among them wanted to create a new kind of country.
Both world wars brought into sharp focus our pull toward isolationism because the public did not want to be engaged in European conflicts. We entered World War I in 1917 and World War II in late 1941, and in each case our presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, had to work for years to prepare Congress and the people themselves for U.S. involvement in overseas wars.
Our tension between isolationism and intervening to make the world safe for democracy is quite evident today, since we struggle over what America should do regarding Russia and Ukraine, Israel and the Palestinians, Iran, China, North Korea and NATO.
A second tension is between conservative versions of capitalism — which favor free markets, modest forms of regulation and minimum forms of redistribution of wealth and income — and versions of a mixed economy and social democracy that rely on major forms of government intervention into the private sector.
Progressives and liberals in the United States, ranging from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass. and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), stand for a strong interventionist government regarding both domestic and foreign policy. Conservative politicians ranging from former President Donald Trump to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) favor an America that, though it should defend countries like Israel, should not get too involved in the affairs of most countries and should be minimally interventionist in economic policy as well.
Government, for the conservatives and Trumpians, is not designed to implement major economic or social programs. It is, however, interventionist when it comes to protecting individuals from intrusions by the government, notably regulation of guns and programs that would, in their view, violate the basic gender or sexual identity of a person, especially young people. At its most extreme, some MAGA supporters support a strongman leader who would psychologically and physically force opponents to conform.
The battle between isolationism and interventionism is confusing to say the least. While conservatives generally are in favor of less intervention in the economy when it comes to providing equal opportunity for all, they tend to be interventionist when it comes to various social issues, including their belief that the government should intervene in women’s reproductive rights.
The overall tension typically relies on two different models of citizenship. The isolationist camp favors a view of persons as independent from each other with capacities to be self-determining beings. The interventionist camp favors a view of persons as fundamentally social beings, who, though they are capable of being self-determining, must rely on a strong interventionist federal government for the means — ranging from food and housing to information technology and health care — to realize their potential.
The debate will certainly not be solved soon and certainly will continue well beyond this election. It would be helpful if the media brought this historic tension to the fore. Hitting the public, especially in debates, with policy contrasts one after another is useful but also exhausting for citizens. The battle needs to be elevated to a more illuminating level.
However, there is one component of the isolation-vs.-intervention theme that is not debatable: No one should intervene in the rule of law or free and fair elections. Any candidate who suggests otherwise imperils our democratic republic and should not be trusted with our sacred vote.
We all should be partisan about only one thing: democracy.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.