Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
There is something very healthy as well as very threatening about the increasing number of independent candidates for president, notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein. West and Stein are on the radical left-wing, and Kennedy is an eccentric centrist.
Our political system is so troubled that new perspectives are definitely needed. The problem is that too many independents running for president may well throw the entire presidential election into chaos and leave no one with 270 electoral votes. Regardless of your politics, it would not be good for the country if the 2024 presidential election gets decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, where a Republican would win since the Republicans will have the authority to make the choice.
What our country needs even more than independents running for president is independents running for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. Moreover, we need to transition from the hopeless goal of bipartisanship to the catalyzing goal of tripartisanship. Indeed, Washington politics needs a tripartisan revolution.
Charles Wheelan made the case in The Centrist Manifesto that five or six centrist Senators who were members of a centrist political party would have enormous leverage on Capitol Hill. He called his strategy the "Fulcrum Strategy." He is correct, but Third Parties paint a target on their back and are therefore always going to run dark horse candidates. Independents, on the other hand, whatever their ideology, can get elected one at a time if they are deft, thoughtful, and well-funded. Some can even get elected if they are not well-funded. The tripartisan ideal does not seek to impose a Third Party vision on the country, left-wing, right-wing or centrist. Rather, it seeks a creative synthesis of concepts and values taken from the Democrats, the Republicans, and a diverse group of independents.
The energy and diversity we are seeing at the level of presidential politics is encouraging but it is also misdirected. Theoretically, even if one of the independents won the race for the presidency there would still be major limitations on what he or she could accomplish -- certainly in domestic politics -- if the Congress remained almost entirely in the hands of the Democrats and the Republicans.
The ideal scenario over the next six to eight years is for about three more independents to be elected to the Senate (there are three now, Senators King, Sinema and Sanders), 10 to 15 independents to be elected to the House, and an independent to be elected to the presidency. These independents would also all rally around the ideal of tripartisanship. Their commitment to the tripartisanship ideal would compel the Democrats and Republicans to work with this third force in American politics to resolve our most pressing policy issues, including gun safety, entitlement reform, immigration, paid leave and child care, health care, the national debt, energy, and foreign policy. These independents, who would not represent the same ideological perspective, would nevertheless frequently vote together, maybe four out of six in the Senate, in order to help the majority party get to 60 votes on major policy bills in order to preserve their club, their leverage, and their chances of reelection.
To be sure, electoral reform is critically important for a tripartisanship revolution to come about, notably Open Primaries, ranked choice voting, and nonpartisan voting districts. There are without doubt structural factors that continue to impede the ability for independents to both run for office and vote in primary elections. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that doubling or tripling turnout in primaries -- from 20% to 40% or 60% -- would also diminish the power of the base in both major parties.
Talk of a Joe Manchin campaign for president has boomed now that he has declared that he will not run for reelection in 2024. Although he might be a candidate to run on a centrist No Labels ticket, he should also consider running as an independent who is motivated both by his centrist values and the tripartisan ideal.
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.