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.
What if the United States is not being ripped apart? Before there can be growth, whether you are thinking about the life of an individual, a sports team, a muscle or an entire nation, there has to be tension, conflict, and pain. Otherwise, things are calm, stable, moving along smoothly.
The conventional wisdom is that our country is polarized, progressives at war with conservatives, enraged advocates on opposite sides of the fence on matters ranging from guns and abortion to immigration, to teaching gender identity in middle school, and religious freedom and the rights of the LGBTQ community to purchase products and services from companies of their choice. Moreover, Washington, D.C. is regarded as the microcosm of the enraged citizens fighting in the North, the South, the Midwest, and the West. The political system itself is regarded as broken due to gerrymandering, distrust of politicians, distrust of the judicial system, and the corrupt role money plays in politics.
Although Washington, D.C. is the epitome of polarization, the country actually is not polarized. Gallup reports in almost every month in the past year that between 40 % and 44% of American voters identify as independents. Sure, 60% of the country is polarized, and half of that 60% is very polarized. But 60% of the country is not the country.
On some of the major policy areas that the polarization narrative features, abortion and guns, majorities of over 60% of the voters are on the same side: There is no close tug of war among the people on the question of whether Roe v. Wade should have been overturned (solid majority says no) or whether the country needs stronger regulation of guns (solid majority says yes), including background checks for anyone who wants to purchase a gun. How could the country be polarized if 40 to 44 American voters out of 100 do not regard themselves as members of the political parties which MSNBC and Fox News tell us represent the American people and are at war with each other?
Now imagine a possible though admittedly not probable future: What if Mr. Trump, wrestling with four indictments, does not make it to the Republican nomination? What if Republican voters pick former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley? Or what if they pick someone out of the purple like swing state Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin as their nominee?
And what if there is a surge of independents who back the centrist ticket for president and vice president that No Labels has threatened to run (though not fund) if the "environment" is right? Democratic West Virginia Senator Joseph Manchin and former Republican Utah Governor Jon Huntsman have been floated as possible candidates. And what if a bold centrist ticket as opposed to a moderate centrist No Labels ticket emerges that draws the support of many independents?
If Trump is sidelined for, say, Haley, and Manchin and Huntsman have the No Labels backing, a bold centrist ticket emerges, and President Biden and Vice President Harris stay in the race and possibly they become bold centrists, then the leading candidates in the race for president would all be speaking from a broadly sensible point of view. The general election would be absent of hatred, viciousness, craziness, and unconstitutional proposals.
Since the rise of information technology, especially the internet and social media, things change faster than ever before. We therefore should not be too surprised if the country takes a turn in a direction away from the pathetic place where it is today.
The odds do not favor this development, but it cannot be assumed that it will not come about.
With about 100 million American adults who do not think of themselves as Democrats and Republicans, and with a recognizable number of dissenters in both parties in Washington, we must admit that the future is open. Trump is not destined to serve a second term in the White House, and he may end up serving time in a federal prison.
The anxiety, the anguish, the fighting, the meanness that we see daily in the news may be the body politic articulating what the extremists and purists believe and feel but not what 40% -- even 50% -- of American adults believe and feel. At the heart of the American experience there is decency, there is respect for the law, there is love of family, and there is hope for the future. We may yet see the independents, the moderates, and the centrists take control of our destiny.
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.