Yesterday I published a five-thousand-word roadmap for fixing America’s broken political system (the Small). Thirty-odd structural reforms, fifteen years in the making. Nonpartisan redistricting. SCOTUS term limits. Killing the debt ceiling as a weapon. The whole plumbing. And the day before that, I relaunched the Country Over Self podcast – the Medium. Consider this the finale of a three-day civic bender to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this long weekend. Here’s the uncomfortable thing about that roadmap: I can’t do a single item on it. I’m not in Congress. I’m not on the Court. I can’t summon an independent redistricting commission into being from my desk. The roadmap is what should happen. It is not, by itself, something…
Category
Politics
July 4, 2026, Post II: A Roadmap to Fix America’s Political System…15 Years Later
As part of my three blog posts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this long weekend, this is the Medium (yesterday’s was the Small). I’ve written about two intersecting topics on this blog over the years. In 2011, I wrote what I called “the beginnings of a roadmap” to fix America’s badly broken political system — a short list of structural reforms framed, as I noted at the time, as “a typical entrepreneur’s approach.” And in 2021 and 2023, I wrote twice about whether CEOs should wade into politics — moving gradually from “only when it directly affects your business” to “also when it indirectly affects your business, including the health of democracy itself.” Fifteen years later, I…
July 4, 2026, Post I: Country Over Self redux
I’m going to write three blog posts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this long weekend, one per day. They fall into Small, Medium, and Large t-shirt sizing. Today, the Small. I launched a limited edition podcast series called Country Over Self: Defining Moments in American History in October 2024 – at the time, I blogged about it here. The series had 13 episodes in which I interviewed prominent historians about individual presidencies and critical moments to analyze the premise of presidents choosing country over party or country over self (or not). My hope was that, in some small way, telling some of our shared stories and highlighting some of our shared values as a country might plan…
New Podcast – Something Old, Something New, Something Red, White, and Blue
I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet since April (I still hate non-competes and while I respect the right of the Chamber of Commerce to sue the FTC, I hope common sense prevails). Between then and now, we switched things up at Bolster, and my co-founder Cathy Hawley is now the CEO. Things are great there, and if you need any executive search help (Director to C-level or Board/Advisory/Fractional), let me know. I’ve been hard at work on a passion project while I’ve been between things professionally, and I’m excited this week to announce the launch of my new podcast mini-series, Country Over Self: Defining Moments in American History. That link is to the web site where you can see the whole plan…
Democracy in Action
I went to our local high school gym last night to vote for a smallish ($12mm) school bond issue as well as another proposition I didn’t quite understand about paying for fire alarms in the schools. As is always the case in New York, I was somewhere between amused and appalled that the voting machines are pre-war vintage (possibly Civil, definitely WWI). But this election was a new experience for me. When I finished voting, I ran into a friend of ours who is on the school board, and he suggested I stick around because the polls were closing, and I’d get to hear the results. This picture is how the results were tabulated. A woman with a whiteboard yelled…
Best CEO/Entrepreneur Quote Ever, By a Mile
Best CEO/Entrepreneur Quote Ever, By a Mile I’ve seen and heard a lot of these. But perhaps it’s fitting that on Independence Day, I realized that this gem of a quote, not specifically about entrepreneurs or CEOs but very applicable to them, comes from President Theodore Roosevelt in his “Citizenship in a Republic” speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910: It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up…
Book Short: Fixing America
Book Short: Fixing America I usually only blog about business books, but since I occasionally comment on politics, I thought I would also post on That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum (book, Kindle), which I just finished. There is much that is good about America. And yet, there is much that is broken and in need of serious repair. I wrote about some thought on fixing our political system last year in The Beginnings of a Roadmap to Fix America’s Badly Broken Political System?, but fixing our political system can only do so much. Tom Friedman, with whom I usually…
9/11’s 10th
9/11’s 10th I wasn’t yet writing this blog on 9/11 (no one was writing blogs yet), and if I had had one, I’m not sure what I would have written. The neighborhood immediately surrounding the World Trade Center had been my home for more than seven years before the twin towers fell, and it continued to be my home for more than seven years after they fell. That same neighborhood was Return Path‘s home for its first 18 months or so, across two different offices. Like all Americans, the attack felt personal. Like all New Yorkers, it was in our face. But it hit home in a different way for those of us who lived and worked in Lower Manhattan….
The Beginnings of a Roadmap to Fix America’s Badly Broken Political System?
The Beginnings of a Roadmap to Fix America’s Badly Broken Political System? UPDATE: This week’s Economist (March 17) has a great special report on the future of the state that you can download here, entitled”Taming Leviathan: The state almost everywhere is big, inefficient and broke. It needn’t be,” which has many rich examples, from California to China, and espouses a bunch of these ideas. I usually try to keep politics away from this blog, but sometimes I can’t help myself. I’m so disgusted with the dysfunction in Washington (and Albany…and Sacramento…and…) these days, that I’ve spent more spare cycles than usual thinking about the symptoms, their root causes, and potential solutions. A typical entrepreneur’s approach, I guess. So here’s my…