James D. Winslow

The counter-culture author, and original gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson is credited with the quote, “Half of life is just showing up.” Actor and director Woody Allen put his own spin on the quote, saying “80% of success is showing up.” I had my own “just showing up” moment last week on a business trip to Nashville. No, it wasn’t the presentation I gave; I actually put in quite a few hours constructing, tweaking, and practicing it

It’s that time of year…many of us spend our Fridays under the lights, Saturdays in college towns, or Sundays at tailgates melding with our football fan tribes. Our team is our team; our coach is our coach; and our quarterback is our quarterback…until they’re not.

A recent National Journal poll found that 67% of Washington insiders believe that Vice President Harris will win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College (see graph; the Washington office participates in the poll). On five previous occasions, including two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and the presidency, despite losing the popular vote.

Official Washington is still on its unofficial month-long August recess. While members of Congress, congressional staffers, administration officials, and federal bureaucrats will begin to trickle back into the city after Labor Day, Congress will not reconvene until September 9.

This past weekend, I stood in the middle of the third fairway and found myself facing golf’s equivalent of a microeconomic dilemma.

To look at me today you might not know it, but there was a time when I was an avid distance runner. Over a nine-year period, I trained for seven marathons, ran in and finished five; ran two half-marathons; completed a dozen 10-milers and an equal amount of 10ks; and regularly logged 25-28 miles a week.

This past week, my daughter had her—ahem—birthday. Together, my wife, son, daughter, and I all went to dinner. It sounds simple, but it’s something we don’t do often enough since the kids moved on, we sold our home, and downsized into a condo. While I knew I was getting the bill at the end of the meal, for the most part, I just sat back and enjoyed the good-natured ribbing my son and daughter gave one another.

I’ve been wanting to write for some time about the link between Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in business; it just hadn’t completely come together for me until this past week. My wife and I were sitting on the couch, watching the Olympics, and we saw something that shocked us.

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.