Public Policy

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. For me, that’s Thanksgiving. I love getting together with family without the focus being on presents; I love the food; and I love the football.

When was the last time you sat down inside a McDonalds; went to the mall to shop; or wrote a series of checks to pay your monthly bills? I get it; we all use the drive-through or delivery apps, Amazon, and online banking. We live in a society of convenience—the convenience to eat on the go, to skip the hunt for a parking spot, to avoid stuffing an envelope and finding a stamp. Truth be told, I even voted by mail this year, way back sometime in October.

With just a few days to go before Election Day, you’ll still see polls that list a significant number of voters as “Undecided.” Following a months-long campaign, candidate debates, and wall-to-wall commercials, you can’t be blamed for asking yourself, “How this is even possible; who are these people?”

Turn on any cable news network, listen to any talk radio station, attend any think tank briefing, and what you get is wall-to-wall coverage of this year’s midterm election horse race. While we’ve all heard what the break down might be between Republicans and Democrats in House, Senate, and even Gubernatorial races, little, if any, attention has been devoted to the potential consequences of the election’s outcome.

In the comedy classic, Caddyshack, there is a scene where Judge Smails (Ted Knight) finds out that Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) does not keep score on the golf course. The Judge asks Ty, “Well, how do you measure yourself with other golfers?” Webb’s deadpan response is, “By height.” Although there may be a certain degree of futility in comparing oneself to other golfers, the same cannot be said of corporations, which constantly measure themselves against peers and competitors.

We’ve all played the children’s game “telephone,” or “dengon” in Japan. The game starts when a difficult word or phrase is whispered into the ear of the next person in line; this person whispers whatever he/she heard to the next person; and the game continues until the last person in line receives the phrase.

This week I had lunch with a Washington-based government affairs colleague from another Japanese subsidiary. It was great to catch up with him in person for the first time since Covid, and we discussed family, vacations, and the NFL. Knowing that his daughter works for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and that we both work in public policy, as expected, the discussion ultimately turned to politics and the upcoming elections.

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida earlier this week as a Category 4 storm, is currently battering the Carolinas, and is expected to hit Washington this weekend as a tropical storm.

Last week, my wife, two kids, and I headed to Boulder, Colorado, for a family wedding. We hiked Boulder’s famous Flatirons and walked the city’s trendy Pearl Street. I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear me say that Boulder and Washington, D.C., are two very different places.

Because most of official Washington goes on recess for nearly the entire month of August (the Senate is scheduled to return to the nation’s capital on September 6 and the House on September 13), the dog days of summer can be a time of reflection for think tank scholars, trade association advocates, and industry groups.