July 2024

I’m a member of the Conference Board’s Government Relations Executive Council (GRE), made up of the government relations leads from some of the world’s largest companies. The Government Affairs departments at these companies range from Air BnB’s 70-person global government affairs team to Emerson’s one-woman shop. The GRE meets three times a year—typically, once at the Conference Board’s New York headquarters, once at a member company site, and once in Washington. This week, we visited Lowe’s 25-story Tech Hub in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Hence my photo in the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.)

At the risk of stating the obvious, President Joe Biden’s (and by extension any Democratic presidential candidate’s) reelection campaign is in serious trouble. In fact, a longtime Democratic political consultant went on record days ago stating that only an ‘October Surprise’ could save him.

The political events over the past two weeks and a private email conversation I had with a professor from my GWU grad school days got me thinking about the law of supply and demand. I know what you’re thinking… “Me too, what else would Supreme Court decisions, a presidential debate, the NATO summit, and the runup to the political conventions make one think about.”