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.
Philosophers and psychologists refer to the "paradox of happiness," which says that if you pursue happiness directly you will probably not be successful. You are more likely to find happiness if you pursue it indirectly.
There is a lot to unpack here, but the concept makes a lot of sense. If you are too driven to achieve a goal, you may lack the conditions needed for the goal to be achieved. These conditions include the right emotions, attitudes, and plans. Thus, if you are too driven to be happy, you will probably be very anxious and prone to disappointment as you run into obstacles in your quest for happiness.
An analogy can be made to the goal an increasing number of American citizens and political theorists and pundits have for America to overcome polarization and become more centrist. Perhaps the most well-known organization seeking centrism is No Labels. They have recently published a handbook of centrist goals, and they have an insurance policy of running (though not funding) a centrist ticket of a Democrat and Republican for president and vice-president if their research shows that "the right environmental conditions exist" for such a ticket to win.
The paradox of centrism takes a different approach. First, the paradox of the centrism camp believes that changing the American political system will take many years, certainly five to ten. It is probably a generational goal; nevertheless, it must be started somewhere.
Second, the paradox of the centrism camp says that we should not push for a centrist political party because this will paint a target on the back of the centrist point of view. If you attack the Democrats and Republicans head on, you are riding your bicycle into two trucks. We need an indirect approach to advancing centrist goals, be they moderate centrist goals or more ambitious new centrist goals. By using an indirect approach it will be more difficult for the two major parties to undermine the approach. Indeed, it may be hard to tell which actions are part of the approach itself, and thus it may be hard to trip up these actions.
Third, the paradox of the centrism camp believes that the goal of bipartisanship must be replaced with tri-partisanship. The goal of getting Democrats and Republicans in Washington to work together and pass major bipartisan legislation is not realistic in the current political environment. Seeking tri-partisan solutions is a better mid-range and long-range goal, recognizing that seeking bipartisanship now cannot be avoided.
It is important to remember that the budget can be passed via reconciliation and does not require much if any bipartisanship so long as there are 51 votes in the Senate (not 60) and a majority in the House. The 117th Congress had Democratic majorities and reconciliation worked. Time will tell how the divided 118th Congress addresses the challenge to pass a budget and the 13 appropriation bills.
In order to get to tri-partisanship we need enough independents in the House and the Senate to create a third force in American politics, but these independents do not all need to come from the standpoint of political centrism. To the contrary, they can come from all ideological perspectives, from libertarian to green and including moderate centrists and ambitious centrists that try to transcend mainstream politics and arrive at creative solutions to problems.
Charles Wheelan, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, argued in The Centrist Manifesto that a centrist political party needed to elect five to six independents in the U.S. Senate as part of a leverage strategy, what he called "The Fulcrum Strategy." This approach failed in 2018. It was too direct. The paradox of centrism teaches us to be indirect. Better to just elect independents and let them exert leverage against the two major parties.
We of course need structural changes to the political system, notably ranked choice voting and open primaries. But the key is to work indirectly towards centrist solutions, which includes ambitious new centrist solutions and not only split the difference between centrist solutions. How five to six independents can be elected to the U.S. Senate -- there are three now, Sanders (Vt), King (Me), and Sinema (Az) -- is a huge question. But pursuing that goal is more likely to get us to moderate or ambitious centrist legislation in Washington than somehow compelling the Democrats and Republicans in Washington today to arrive at bipartisan, centrist solutions to our policy challenges in the areas of immigration, guns, racial relations, energy, LGBTQ rights, the environment, and family policy.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
