PITTSBURGH — Lower than one 12 months after narrowly losing the Republican nomination for US Senate in Pennsylvania to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, David McCormick is sitting in his front room pondering a provocative query:
“China has a plan for global supremacy. What’s our plan?” he said to The Post.
It’s an enormous theme in his recent book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” out Tuesday.
It’s a deep dive into his belief that the US is in need of renewal — what must occur to right the ship, especially on the intersection of technology, economics and national security.
The previous CEO of Bridgewater Associates, 57, said he began writing the book even before he decided to run for office.
“The book is absolutely about bringing together a plan to renew America — to enhance our approach to education on this country, to confront China and to construct our defensive capability with investing within the military and to tackle the woke institutions which can be in our society today,” he said.
McCormick said he finished his book within the months after a disappointing primary race that had him traveling to each corner of his home state. Along the best way, he listened to what residents think is absolutely lacking in America without delay.
“There’s this thing that happens once you meet with people where they’re of their communities, and take heed to their stories and their concerns,” he said. “Those moments and connections guided me towards what was vital to them.”
Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, McCormick is the son of two educators: His mother was a faculty teacher and his father the president of Bloomsburg College. He grew up in Bloomsburg and was his highschool’s star linebacker.
McCormick said his dream was to go to Penn State, but his father saw something different in his son and suggested he apply to West Point.
“He said ‘You don’t should go, just apply. You’ve gotten to use.’ After which once I got in, it was a done deal,” McCormick said.
After graduation, he went on to the 82nd Ranger School throughout the Gulf War, then earned a doctorate from Princeton, took a job at McKinsey and got here home to Western Pennsylvania to run FreeMarkets — one in all the primary highly successful tech firms within the region.
He later served as George W. Bush’s Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs, before joining Bridgewater Associates in Connecticut.
“After I left the Army, my dad was horrified — horrified — because 15 more years and I could have had a pension,” McCormick recalled. “After I went to graduate school to be a professor after which decided I [was] never going to be a professor, he thought I used to be crazy. Same once I took a job at McKenzie after which eventually left.
“My family literally used to have conversations on Sunday night with my father, brother and my mom that centered on, ‘What are we going to do about David? He’s aimless. He can’t find his path.’”
McCormick said his first very public gut punch got here in his forties, when he was fired as CEO at Bridgewater.
“A few 12 months and a half after working there, the founder, Ray Dalio, said he wanted me to be the co-CEO together with one other guy … I’d been a CEO at FreeMarkets. I felt like I used to be able to take this on,” he said. “Eighteen months later, he decided to fireplace me” — in a conference room filled with people.
“I used to be blindsided,” McCormick said.
Nonetheless, he made the hard decision to remain on on the hedge fund despite losing the highest job.
“I considered quitting, but I ultimately decided I needed to get things straight about what I got flawed,” he said. “So I became a road warrior — I got on the road and shortly had more miles logged of any person at Bridgewater. I used to be ginning up business. I used to be the lead business guy. After which it began to hum.”
Two years later he was named president of Bridgewater after which eventually re-offered the highest spot.
“When Dalio asked me in 2016 if I’d take the CEO job again, I did, but those years in between were tough,” McCormick said. “It taught me an enormous amount of humility. It taught me a number of empathy for others. I mean, it was a life experience that was within the newspapers. I felt embarrassed.”
There are distinct parallels between the Bridgewater incident and the gut punch McCormick said he felt when he lost to Oz by lower than 900 votes — it, too, was public, everyone saw him lose and the loss blindsided him.
“I believed I had won until the moment that I conceded,” he admitted. “It was only after the recount numbers began to are available in that the map didn’t work. At that moment I knew that I’d concede and be gracious about it and move forward.”
Once more, he has spent the past 10 months being a road warrior, going out and listening to people in towns across Pennsylvania.
McCormick said, nonetheless, he didn’t feel a gut punch when former President Donald Trump endorsed Oz — though McCormick’s wife, Dina Powell, had served within the Trump administration as the US Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy.
He doesn’t blame Trump for his loss either, despite how negative Trump went on him days before the first.
“Obviously if the previous president of the US endorses another person and attacks you, that doesn’t help. But by way of losing the campaign, I’m ultimately liable for the campaign,” McCormick said. “I don’t blame anybody. I own it.”
Along with covering all of this, McCormick’s book also looks at his experience coping with nefarious actors just like the Communist Party of China and its trade practices during his time within the Bush administration.
McCormick recalled the primary time he visited China, in 1992, right after he retired from the Army. “I rode this train throughout the Chinese countryside, and on the time it was an agrarian economy and had little or no urban growth the best way that we understand it today,” he said.
He got here back 15 years later, while serving in US Department of Commerce, and saw firsthand how focused China was on stealing American technology to construct their military.
“It was clear then, after which later [when] I served on the treasury, that China was having access to the worldwide economy, but China wasn’t giving access to US firms,” McCormick said.
“I used to be one in all the people within the national security world that was saying, ‘Hey, let’s watch out and never give China access to these items.’ It was a warning that somewhat controversial on the time.”
Within the book, McCormick also lays out a national renewal agenda centered on three ideals.
“The primary principle holds that liberty is the God‐given right of every one in all us, and its protection is the chief purpose of our government. We must not forget these truths. Conservatives, particularly, must defend them; that’s, in spite of everything, what we’re struggling to conserve,” he writes.
“The second principle reaffirms that with liberty comes opportunity. America is best when all inside it have their shot on the American dream … However the American dream does greater than promise opportunity; it also bestows the solemn duty to preserve it,” McCormick writes. “Which means we as a rustic must take care of the people left behind by globalization and create opportunity for them and all those too long denied it. It means we must create good jobs here at home and construct a more resilient economy … “
Finally, McCormick writes, “The third principle asserts that the creed of liberty and opportunity makes our nation exceptional, and that exceptionalism gives us a novel role on the planet. America has misused and wasted its power in frivolous foreign expeditions, yet no other country has done a lot to advance freedom or prosperity … No other country will find a way to rise up to Communist China, which wants to construct the world in its image … The one bulwark against that dystopia is American strength.”
McCormick is at a tipping point as as to whether or he’s running for Senate again.
Last 12 months, Republicans suffered losses up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania, from the governor’s office to congressional seats to the balance of power within the state house — in addition to Oz losing the US Senate race to Democrat John Fetterman.
In actual fact, 2022 marked the primary time in several many years that two Democrats — the opposite being Sen. Bob Casey, who’s up for reelection in 2024 — have held each US Senate seats within the state.
Fetterman, who has a heart condition and suffered a stroke last May, has struggled in his recovery. Most recently, he was hospitalized for nearly a month at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC, for clinical depression — giving many to invest that, if Fetterman decides to resign for health reasons, there may very well be two US Senate races on this state in 2024.
McCormick said the reply as to whether he’ll run or not will come from people’s response to what he outlines within the book.
“I even have found who I’m through this process. I’m a completely happy warrior. And the query is — is Pennsylvania ready for a completely happy warrior? Can a completely happy warrior win?”