Bridgewater Republicanism and the Future of Bezosism
Good afternoon and thanks for reading The Daily Courant, highlighting the latest and most provocative new journalism at Puck.
Plus, below the fold, Teddy Schleifer takes stock of some of the biggest storylines in Silicon Valley politics and philanthropy. And, at 6 p.m. Eastern, don’t miss Julia Ioffe in conversation with Michael Schwirtz of The New York Times on Twitter Spaces, where they’ll be discussing Ukraine, NATO, and what’s next for Putin’s latest proxy war.
Notes on David McCormick’s Trump Lite playbook, Chamath’s SPAC folly, more meme-stock insanity, and the passing of a Wall Street icon. Each week, I receive feedback from readers and sources about Wall Street’s biggest characters and concerns. I’ll be engaging with some of those questions here—in addition to a few observations of my own.
David McCormick, the highly respected C.E.O. of Bridgewater, appears to be adopting the Trump-era “populist” playbook for his Senate run in Pennsylvania, with help from Hope Hicks, Cliff Sims and, incredibly, Stephen Miller. What is he thinking, and what does Wall Street make of it?
I know and like David. I also know and like (and have written about) his wife, Dina Powell, a partner at Goldman Sachs and a member of the management committee who served for nearly a year as Deputy National Security Advisor under Donald Trump. They are both smart, charming, and fun company. And David has long been interested in politics. He worked in the Commerce Department and as an economic adviser in the White House before becoming undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs under George W. Bush. Perhaps just as important, he’s probably had enough of the Ray Dalio show at this point—he’s been the sole C.E.O. of Bridgewater Associates, Dalio’s hedge fund, since April 2020 and was co-C.E.O. for three years before that.
Running for Senate from Pennsylvania strikes me as the kind of challenge that a Gulf War veteran, such as McCormick, would enjoy. He’s got a killer resume to boot. In addition to his 12 years at Bridgewater, he was a consultant at McKinsey for three years, has a PhD from Princeton, and was the C.E.O. of Freemarkets, Inc., a software manufacturer, before it was acquired for some $500 million by Ariba, in 2004. He then served as Ariba’s president for a year. There is no question in my mind that he’d make a great senator and, in any event, a better politician than celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz. I have always thought that David had superb judgment. So if he is willing to dive into electoral politics at a high level, I figure he must know what he’s getting himself into. He certainly can afford the best strategists. That’s why I am really scratching my head with his decision to employ the former Trump advisors Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller. These two are seriously damaged goods, especially Miller, a feral nativist with the personality of an orphaned rabid dog…
FOUR STORIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
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TEDDY SCHLEIFER
Year-end reflections on the political-media industrial complex, Biden’s health secret, Harris’s 2024 odds, and Putin’s next move.
JULIA IOFFE
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BARATUNDE THURSTON
The C.E.O. of Morgan Stanley dishes on Goldman and succession, among other topics, over bespoke sushi.
WILLIAM D. COHAN |