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This week was another spent on the road, and another spent dealing with cancellations and delays. So, as I cooled my jets in airport lounges waiting for the airlines to get their act together, I got caught up on recent political headlines.
The off-year elections were held on Tuesday, and it surely seems like it was a very good day for the Democrats. While the media has been trumpeting this as a harbinger for the looming mid-terms, I don’t know how much we should really read into Democrat wins in…, well, Democrat areas. New York City? New Jersey? Hardly Red bastions. But the margins of victory are still noteworthy. The Democrat gubernatorial candidate received nearly 60 percent of the vote in New Jersey [ [link removed] ] as a super-charged Democrat base came out to vote in droves.
Looking forward, as a general rule, the party that holds the White House generally does poorly in the mid-terms. This was true in Virginia and it appears many federal employees who reside in northern Virginia and remain out of work due to the historically-long government shutdown voiced their dissatisfaction at the polls…and took it out on Republicans.
One the most surprising outcomes of last Tuesday night was the election of Jay Jones as Virginia’s Attorney General, defeating a GOP incumbent. Jones had been embroiled in a scandal and as some of his violent texts [ [link removed] ] came to light, the outcome of the race seemed to be less and less certain. Jones ended up winning nearly 53 percent of the vote. I can’t help but be a little saddened by the result…if fantasizing about violence [ [link removed] ] against your political opponents and their families isn’t disqualifying, then what is? It unfortunately reveals the coarseness (and hypocrisy) of today’s politics as many voters readily excuse deficiencies of their own political tribe in the interest of beating the other.
In New York City, the election victory of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani [ [link removed] ] is sending shockwaves throughout the country. Mamdani is emblematic of the young, far-left progressive wing of the Democrat party that appears to be ascendent. During the campaign he championed ideas such as a rent freeze, fare-free city buses, and free city-run grocery stores, ideas that appear archaic to those of us who lived through the Cold War and yet fresh and innovative to those who did not. (I find it ironic that the proposition of a government run grocery store was compelling to voters…during a government shut down!) Mamdani’s election inspired a bunch of admittedly politicized yet hilarious videos, including the following one which caught my attention.
Regardless, his election is surely a sign of the times, where dissatisfaction with affordability, among other galvanizing topics, is driving action. Might this be pointing to an AOC run [ [link removed] ] for U.S. Senate? Or even president? Regardless, these dynamics squarely point to a very divisive presidential primary process for the Democrats — generational and idealogical battle lines have been drawn — and a headwind for the party’s prospects to reclaim the White House in 2028.
Enough rambling, time for remembering.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away this week [ [link removed] ]. His public service career spanned decades and had several iterations…as a member of congress, presidential chief of staff, the U.S. Secretary of Defense who guided the country through the First Gulf War, and then finally as the Vice President who was the architect of the American response to 9/11. I always admired his intellect and his calm dispassionate approach to debate and persuasion; his takedown [ [link removed] ] of his opponent in the 2004 vice presidential debate is the stuff of legend.
As Sarah Lawrence College Professor of Politics Samuel Abrams highlighted, Cheney was about far more than mere service: “…beyond the offices he held, Cheney represented something far rarer in modern public life; a disciplined servant of the republic who carried the burdens of leadership without seeking applause [ [link removed] ].”
As an intern at the American Enterprise Institute [ [link removed] ] in the early 1990s, I had a chance to get to know Dick and his wife Lynne, and fondly recall many conversations about the destructive dynamics around “political correctness,” the predecessor to the woke fever that seems finally to be breaking. They were both always gracious, kind, supportive, and encouraging of me. My last substantive conversation with him was in 2019 when we spoke at length about the threat of an increasingly aggressive China at an event in the Middle East at which we were keynote speakers.
While this is clearly a controversial view today, I agree with AEI senior fellow Michael Rubin who wrote in the National Security Journal that “History Will Vindicate Dick Cheney [ [link removed] ].” Cheney was the consummate public servant, led with values, and didn’t change his stance based on the latest polls. As Rubin summarizes: “Cheney often said he made the best decisions with the intelligence available at the time…While the CIA likes to depict its intelligence on Iraq as clear and suggest Cheney fabricated a pretext for war, the reality was that CIA reports often pointed in multiple directions and were full of if’s and but’s… [ [link removed] ]”
As I’ve often noted in my talks about navigating uncertainty, the essence of leadership is making a decision with the best available information at the time. The future is never certain and outcomes often differ (sometimes materially) from predictions. Leaders need to gather diverse perspectives, think in terms of multiple futures, triangulate different proposed actions, and ultimately… lead. Cheney did that.
America needs more independent thinkers who are dedicated to the nation. As Yuval Levin wrote in the [ [link removed] ]National Review [ [link removed] ], [ [link removed] ]
A free society always depends on the willingness of some of its ablest people to spend their lives in the service of the nation as public officials. People who understand themselves as providing that kind of service to their country stand out in our democracy. They are surely moved by the usual mix of motives that drive people into political life: ambition, confidence, curiosity, a desire to make a difference and to be known for making a difference, love of country. But they stand out because they tend to serve in a peculiar variety of offices over an unusually long stretch of time and to embody each of them by taking its distinct purpose and form seriously. America has always been fortunate to have such people in its public life. But their number has diminished over time, so those we have gotten to see in our own lifetimes really stand out. [ [link removed] ]
Dick Cheney was a dedicated public servant, “a gentleman of power and principle [ [link removed] ],” and a man who blended conviction with civility. He understood politics was about responsibility (not resentment) and leadership was about values (not polls). And perhaps most importantly, he unapologetically put America first.
VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worth profiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World [ [link removed] ], Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence [ [link removed] ] and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst [ [link removed] ]. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.

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