David McCormick's Battle Plan To Renew America 58:04

It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox. Welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz. Thanks for allowing us into your lives to spend a little bit of time with you. I think you're really going to like this because we got an exciting guest.

Uh, in David McCormick, he ran for the Senate there, lost to Oz in the primary in Pennsylvania. A lot of people anticipate he might run again. He hasn't said definitively, but, um,

You ought to know about this guy because he has an amazing background. He's written a book. It's called Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. And he is really the epitome of the American dream. I think some people look at somebody who's been ultra successful and they kind of shun them and say, oh, you know, he obviously had it easy. This guy did not have it easy.

and what he did and how he did it. I look forward to having the discussion. I've met him, but I don't really know him. And I hope at the end of the podcast you have a better sense of what he's writing about in this book, Superpower and Peril, but also just the person because I think he's going to continue to be a

a player in politics in general, and his success story, I think, can be emulated. And there's a lot of lessons to learn there. So I look forward to having the discussion with David McCormick coming up. But we're also going to highlight the stupid because, you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. But I want to kick things off by

highlighting the news. And there's lots happening in the news. Oh my goodness. Lots happening in news. Big news. Important news. But there's some stories that I think are also very, very important that slide under the radar or get lost in the shuffle just because there's even bigger news out there. So I want to go back and just make sure that

that we're touching on some of those because, you know, I share these stories and talk about these things with my wife and whatnot and others. And they're like, wait, I didn't quite see that because it's, but anyway, regardless, a couple of things in the news in Connecticut, according to foxnews.com, there are a lot of families who have been victims of crimes. And I, you know, I can't even imagine that.

having to go to the horrific lengths that families go to when a loved one is on the receiving end is a victim in a crime. I would argue that they're victims of

Not only who were physically there, who were physically abused or murdered or whatever it might be, but there are also the family members who love them. They care for them. They're their parents, their brothers, their sisters, their friends, their husbands, wives, whatever it might be. Those two are victims because they didn't sign up for this. A lot of these things are random. Some are premeditated victims.

And I don't think people ask, for instance, to be on the receiving end of a murder. Well, in Connecticut, thanks Connecticut, the victims and their families are absolutely outraged because 44, 44 murderers had their sentences commuted, accusing the victims, accused the Board of Pardons and Paroles of amending its policy

to favor the state's most violent criminals. How is it that we have 44 in mass murderers? Not allegations of murders, convictions of murders or plea deals of murders.

And then to have those 44 murderers have their sentences commuted. Are you kidding me? You know, there's a lot of, um, there was been discussion in the past three strikes you're out, um, you know, truth in sentencing. Some people will get death penalty and they say, oh, well, we're, we're opposed to the death penalty because life in prison, that ought to be good enough. The problem is with life in prison, it doesn't always end up being life in prison.

Because they get released in mass. Gavin Newsom, I think there were 700 people that were released. I'd have to check the number. OK, but this is the problem with the soft on crime progressive Democrats of today and for the Connecticut Democrats.

to have 44 murderers have their sentences commuted, you can see how victims and people that are in favor of law and order are just outraged by that. All right, next item in the news, Gavin Newsom. It's hard to go through these discussions without talking about the governor of California and his radical views on life. New news a little while ago was that he was mobilizing or thinking of mobilizing the National Guard to start building these mini-homes.

you know you maybe have been on one of those television networks and or online or pinterest or whatever it might be you see these mini homes they look kind of fun you know and i can understand where somebody who is homeless they can't afford the exorbitant rent or exorbitant uh homes in pick anywhere uh the price of homes it's under it's hard not everybody can go out and buy a 700 000 home

And you're getting less and less for your money. And maybe this is part of the solution for the homeless problem. But to mobilize the National Guard to do this and tackle this, are you telling me the National Guard doesn't have anything else to be working on, preparing for natural disasters, deployments, all kinds of things?

And they're going to be leveraged to do many homes. This governor, I don't think it's a long-term plan. And if you look at the hundreds of thousands of people that are homeless, how in the world is this a long-term solution?

I mean, can you take care of 20 people? Can you take care of 40 people? And some people would argue and say, well, yeah, it's worth it if it's just 40. Okay, you have a systemic homeless problem and you have no solution other than giving them free things. And that to me is not going to solve the problem long-term. Okay, but now it's time to bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere.

I want to go back, not too long ago, but I want to go back to the United States Attorney General Merrick Garland. He had the gall to promise after, remember there were hundreds of thousands of people have died with fentanyl that's coming across the southern border. There's human trafficking. There are people on the terrorist watch list.

There are an untold number of horrific things happening coming across our border. Four Americans evidently went south of the border to get a medical procedure. Two were killed. Two were able to get back. Horrific. We should all be outraged. That should never happen. Okay?

But suddenly, even though hundreds of thousands of people have died, even though countless number of people have been raped along the way as the coyotes, the drug cartels bring these people across the border, all those things, two people got killed. And now the attorney general says, and this is a quote, he promised that the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI, quote, are doing everything possible to

to dismantle and disrupt and ultimately prosecute the leaders of the cartels and the entire networks that they depend on, end quote. I do not believe that. I do not believe that even comes close. Yeah, I would love to have a survey of the rank and file members of the DEA and the FBI. Is the Attorney General, is the United States of America doing, quote, everything possible to

to dismantle and disrupt and ultimately prosecute the leaders of the cartels. That is the quote from the Attorney General. Senate testimony, and I don't believe a word of it. I think they're giving a...

a tacit handful of people working on it. I'm sure we could find agents, men and women who have put their lives on the line, are trying to do the best thing. But to suggest that the United States of America is doing everything possible, that it does not even come close. Doesn't even come close to the truth. That to me is stupid. If you think we're that gullible, Mr. Attorney General,

Put up a serious fight. Take these people down. Don't let the cartels have operational control because they do right now. All right, that's bringing on the stupid. It's time to transition because we actually have a person who wants to make a difference in the world, has made a difference in the world, has written a book about how to make sure that the United States of America is the strongest it can possibly be.

He's written a book. It's called Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. His name is David McCormick. So let's give him a call and dial up David McCormick. Hello. Hey, David, this is Jason Chaffetz. Hey, Jason, how are you? Thanks so much for letting me intrude on your day and give you a shout. I do appreciate it. Thanks for joining the podcast.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm anxious to talk to you. I'm excited about you and learning more about you. I've met you briefly. I've kind of seen you from afar, but now you got this new book. You got a lot out there, a lot to talk about. And so listen, I appreciate joining us and just want to talk a little bit more about your background and where you came from, where you're going and life lessons and

And tell us a little bit about this book, Superpower in Peril, about a battle plan to renew America. You've had a lot of success. Why write a book? Well, yeah, listen, I mean, maybe if I would have known what it was going to take to write a book, I'm not sure I would have embarked on the journey. But, you know, I started writing the book a couple of years ago before I ever decided to run for the Senate. And the reason was because I felt like the country was headed in the wrong direction economically,

national security wise, spiritually. And 80% of Americans agree. They think the country's heading in the wrong direction. And so that was the reason for the book. But, you know, the book has a pessimistic title, Superpower in Peril. But it's an optimistic book because decline, American decline is a choice, but so is renewal. And so this book is about a plan for renewal.

and what it takes to renew America. And we've done it over and over again. And so I wrote the book because I wanted to talk about a plan to educate our people, to confront China, and to secure America. And then I got about two-thirds of the way through it, and then I decided to run for the Senate. So I had to put the book down and run for the Senate. As you know, I sadly fell a few votes short. But when I got done with that, I came back to the book.

And it was so much better to finish it after the campaign because all the things that I was worried about and all the things I was pessimistic about, but also all the things that I felt optimistic about, I saw on the campaign trail. And so I try to include some of that in the book. Yeah, you know, there's nothing better than getting out on the campaign trail, going town by town, city by city, small groups, large groups, you know, diners. It doesn't matter. You learn about America. You learn about your state. You learn about

what people are really concerned about. And it's interesting what they don't ask, and it's interesting what they do ask. And you just, there's no better lesson than actually being out there and interacting. - Couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more. And my big takeaway is, which was a lesson to me, but also I think our conservative party is they wanna look forward. They want solutions.

for these problems that are affecting their everyday lives. And, you know, it's getting harder and harder to go paycheck to paycheck with inflation and, you know, the fentanyl crisis in Pennsylvania and the crime in this, in the cities. And, and so they want, they want leadership that's going to fix those problems. And that was my big takeaway. So look, when people go out and vote and I don't care whether it's your homeowners association or your County commission or, or,

the United States Senate, I mean, they're putting a lot of trust in somebody individually. And so let's go back. I want to go back to, I want to start with, I was born in and then kind of walk us through methodically what, what life was like for you growing up because you had immense, I mean, success and service in the military. You've had it in the business world.

But go back to those formative years and kind of tell us what life was like for little David McCormick. Yeah, well, thanks for letting me talk about it. I'm like, I think a sixth generation Pennsylvania. So I'm a Scotch-Irish Pennsylvania. My family, four bears, moved to Pennsylvania. And they grew up mostly in the western part of Pennsylvania. So my mom was born in Punxsutawney. And my dad was born of Punxsutawney Phil. And my dad was born in a little town.

town called Plumville, right outside of Indiana. And I was born outside of Pittsburgh. And so we were Western Pennsylvanians, but my mom and dad were both teachers. And my dad took a job eventually in the northeastern part of the state. And so while I was born in Pittsburgh, I grew up in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, which is

the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, mostly immigrant families that came to work in the mines and the mills and the manufacturing towns around Northeastern Pennsylvania. And my town was Bloomsburg. And Bloomsburg had a college in it where my dad worked and was the president. And it had a big mill, which was the most employed, most of the workers called the McGee Carpet Mill. And

And, you know, this was rural Pennsylvania. So this is the kind of place that the Monday after Thanksgiving that they get the kids off of school because that's when you go hunt deer. And it was the kind of place that Friday Night Lights was. I mean, the whole town came for the football games, football and wrestled.

And, and in the summers I bailed hay. We had a farm and we had a Christmas trees on the farm. I trimmed Christmas trees and I worked as a bus boy in the local restaurant and it was just a idyllic way to grow up.

And, you know, we we felt blessed. And I wanted to play Penn State football like any self-respecting young boy growing up in Pennsylvania. And I got recruited to West Point instead to wrestle and play football. And I didn't really have any military connection because nobody in my family had been in the military for a couple generations. And my dad said, you got to apply. You know, you have to make your own choice what's best for you, but you got to apply. Right.

And I applied and to my surprise got in that changed my life because even though I hadn't planned on it, my whole little town came out and said, this was a big deal. It was in the newspaper, you know, first kid in decades to go to an Academy. And that started me in my way. So I don't know how much detail you want to go into, but that, that defining those first 18 years,

of growing up in Pennsylvania, you know, rural Pennsylvania, working, being part of that. And then the military, that sort of shaped my life. And everything that followed is just a result of those first, you know, 18 years. So let's kind of go into a couple of those things. First of all, I don't know, I think I mentioned this to you, but my dad grew up in, he was born in D.C., but his dad was

My grandfather was an FBI agent stationed in Philadelphia. So my dad actually grew up in Germantown, and he did end up going to Penn State. He was not on the Penn State football team, but he was the manager of the Penn State football team. He scheduled their travel. He did all this stuff, and his ride through Penn,

Penn State was the football team, but as the student manager of the team, and he did that, and great memories for him before he kind of went out west and joined the Air Force and did some things like that. But yeah,

And I remember my dad, my brother and I, Alex, got in the back of the car with him, and he took us to Germantown, took us to Penn State. We drove through Amish country. We did the whole thing. We loved it. It was great. The formative years in Pennsylvania were good to him. Good to me, too. I know just what you mean. Did you have brothers, sisters? And you were obviously pretty good in sports. If you were playing football and wrestling, what did you learn from sport?

You know, I had one person in my life that I talk about in the book, which was my high school football coach. And this, of all the people I've had in my life, this guy probably made the biggest difference. I was in my early years of high school, freshman, sophomore years, I played on the football team, but I wasn't very good. And I kind of rode the bench. And my sophomore year, whenever the team was losing badly or winning badly, winning decisively, they put me in in the fourth quarter. I played defense.

And so I would always hustle and I made a bunch of good tackles at the end of these games, but I was, you know, probably third or fourth strength, something like that. And there was a new coach. The coach got fired the end of my sophomore year. The football team wasn't, wasn't very good.

And there was a new coach who came in and his name was Tom Lynn. And he was a local kid that had grown up, played football in college. He was just a tough guy. He was a shop teacher at a local high school. And he watched films all summer. And he saw this kid that came in at the end of every game and

and would, you know, make big tackles, but wasn't on the field for most of the game. And so he figured out that was me and he called me. He brought me into his office in the summer. He said, listen, I think you have a place in this team as the starting linebacker, but you've got to work. You know, you got to put weight on, you got to work in camp. And so I did that. I worked so hard. And at the end of camp,

This was shocking to me. He named me co-captain of the team. Really? This was the bench warmer who gets to be co-captain. And he saw something in me that I did not see in myself. And he was a wonderful man, but he's unbelievably tough and ruthless. And so we got about halfway through the season and the team was doing well, but not that well. And I started to get a lot of press because,

where I was doing well and getting lots of tackles. And I was on the front page of the local newspaper. And that weekend, we had a game. And it was a pouring, rainy game. And we just looked terrible in the first half. And he came into the locker room. And he just went hard against everybody. But not me. He didn't mention me. Then right at the end of it, he said, hey, Dave, by the way,

I've been reading those clips about you in the newspaper and boy, oh boy, you're really showing your stuff. I mean, just the opposite. And I was just shrinking, Jason. I mean, I just couldn't escape it. And, and he was relentless and every, you know, every day you pushed, he'd have you push harder. And so it just made you realize when, when you're, first of all, you saw something in me, I didn't see in myself. Second, there was no quarter.

If you're a leader, you're responsible. And if we're losing and we're not playing well, the captain's responsible. And and so we continued and we got pretty good and we won the championship the next year. And I was the all state linebacker. And, you know, it turned out to be an amazing thing. And and when I went to West Point, I we went in there in the first day of West Point.

And all the new cadets sit in a big auditorium and they say, how many people here were first in their class? Everybody sticks, you know, a bunch of people stick their hands up. Not me. Not me. Who was president of the class? A bunch of people stick their hand up. Not me. And he eventually gets to who's captain of the football team. And I put my hand up and I remember thinking, but for Tom Lynn, this would have never been true. I would have never seen that in myself. So sports is,

really left an imprint, but both what it takes to win, what it takes to lead, but also a bit of the agony of defeat. Because, you know, you learn, if you're a competitor, you learn to hate losing. You learn to despise losing. And so I learned a lot about life in those first couple years in sports in Bloomsburg. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with David McCormick right after this.

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Do you think that happens now? I mean, I'm sure it does in pockets of America. I doubt you go into some of the rural parts of America and that, but the woke ism that has enveloped and that you just kind of see in this drumbeat daily, uh,

I wonder if those types of formative experiences are even possible in a good portion of our country today. I think they're increasingly rare. And I agree with you. And I talk about this in my book, Superpower and Peril, where I talk about institutions. You know, when de Tocqueville went across America and wrote the famous book on democracy, he talked about all these little institutions, right?

you know, fire halls and communities and institutions like football. And of course the military is one of the most binding institutions in our country. And I saw that in the campaign trial, you could always relate to people in the military, but all those institutions, Jason, the schools, which teach a history of a, of America that you and I wouldn't recognize. And, you know, really are teaching our kids to be ashamed of,

of America, that America was a country conceived in sin. The military, you know, I say this sadly as a former army officer, but under the Biden administration, the, the army released its climate strategy before it released its war fighting strategy. You know, we see it in business with like the fundamentals of merit, the notion of

the allocation of capital for profit you know some basic fundamental building blocks of the american experiment are being um tested challenged under siege and i agree with you the america we know and the institutions we know are slipping away and and honestly that's a big part of why i wrote the book and why i ran for the senate

Just like you saw with the military. And first of all, thank you for your service. And thanks to all that have gone before us and served. And just, you know, thank you for your service. But, you know, when they're out there trying to figure out, you know, who's going to go to which bathroom, and then, you know, they're going to take the admission standards down, lower the number of push-ups you got to do, because they can't seem to recruit anybody. And I just...

That's another topic for another day, but it is a signal canary in the coal mine, if you will, that we have some serious fundamental problems if you can't get people to pass the physical fitness test to enter into the United States military system.

We're trying to build a war machine so we can all live safe, free, and prosperous and not just be the most politically correct. But anyway, I digress. All right, let's keep going down this path. I'm with you, man. I'm with you. So you're coming out of this small town. You get into West Point. I mean, you learn a lot in West Point, but how did that change the trajectory of your life? Because inevitably, those are such important formative years, and you make a lot of decisions that affect people.

the whole rest of the trajectory. So what did you learn there? And where did that take you? Yeah. You know, I, I mean, there's so many lessons, but you know, there's a couple I'll, I'll highlight just ever so briefly. I mean, the first thing is, is West Point's motto, which is duty, honor country. And, and,

That, you know, that's, you know, my mom and dad were public servants, teachers. But that really has been part of my whole life is even when I've been in the private sector, there was always, you know, this notion of service and leadership. And so that's one of the things West Point just knocks into your brain. And, you know, we're, you know, you're a patriot. I'm a patriot. There's many patriots. But boy, every day ingrained and we serve at the, you know, we serve everybody.

our country, we serve the whole purpose of your existence at West points to serve. So that was a big one. The second one is basic leadership. And of course there's a gazillion books written about leadership, but the thing I learned there about leadership was that leadership is not about you. If you're going to say it in one sentence, it's about others. And so just little things that have carried me through my whole life. Like when you get done with a road march,

And, you know, you've been working all day. You go first and look at the people in your unit, the platoon.

and make sure they don't have blisters in their feet because blisters get infected and it really can be debilitating before you look at your own feet. You know, when there's, you know, you've done a hard day and you want to go to the mess hall and eat, you know, the officer eats last, not first, because the men or the men and women in their command should be fed first. Just those basic leadership things that you lead by example, you're unselfish or you're focused on others. And then the third thing,

which, which man is so missing today. It is so missing, but I was in a platoon when I first got there, I was 22 to the 82nd airborne. I went from West Point to the 82nd airborne. West Point has some of these same characteristics, but the army really had it where you step in there and, you know, I'm a,

a white kid from rural Pennsylvania and had gone to West Point. And in my platoon, there's a white kid from rural Alabama. There's an African-American from Newark. There's a rich white kid from Boston who dropped out of college. My platoon sergeant was this Puerto Rican guy who was 35

I was 22 at the time. This guy seemed like he was ancient, you know, 35. And his job was to keep the young lieutenant out of trouble. And during that entire time, I don't remember a single conversation about what anybody was, who was conservative, who was liberal. I didn't feel any of that. I don't even remember talking about it. All I know is that we were committed to one another, to the country, to something bigger than ourselves and to each other.

And when that same unit deployed to Iraq for combat, like it was, it was not, you know, there was no pettiness. There was no smallness. It was all about the country. And that kind of,

just, just doesn't exist today. It's partially because of the woke stuff that you're talking about. And, uh, so anyway, those are the things that I take away from, from West Point and the army. And I, well, I wouldn't trade those days for, for anything in the world. No, you make a very important point here. I, when I was in Congress, I had a chance to go out on the San Jacinto, which was part of the Eisenhower carrier group there, um, just off the coast of Iran. Uh, it kind of, and, uh,

Went out there, spent the night, and just I think I'm going to get the number wrong, but just over 200 sailors out there. And I was absolutely struck by the fact that most of the people on that ship were in their 20s. And just a handful of them were, you know, in their 30s. And even less that, you know, they're just literally like on one hand, you know, a few 40-something-year-olds,

And yet such an important ship in a very volatile part of the world. But I looked at the cross section of people and here they were from every walk of life all throughout the country and they were focused on their mission and it was such a great thing. I mean, it was so amazing to see and feel how they were working together as a cohesive unit in part of a bigger strategy

to support and defend the United States of America. And those types of lessons, those people are going to carry that out for the rest of their lives. And if anybody has a chance to go join the military and learn what you get to learn there, or the National Guard, or whatever it might be, that is such a vital part of the fabric of our country. It really is. I couldn't agree with you more, Jason. I really believe that. Okay, so you go out, you serve, you get deployed,

But then talk us through the next part of your life because you ultimately did the service, but then you had some changes along the way too. You got married, right? And you've had kids. You've got pictures in your book. So I could see this beautiful family of yours. I got some pictures, yeah. So I went to – the funny thing, I was teasing my dad about this the other night.

My mom and dad still live in Pennsylvania. But when people, and you described it, when they think about my career and they describe it, it sounds like it just went from one good thing to the next. It was just a straight line of success. But that's actually not what happened at all. And so what happened was I served in the military and I really, really loved it and almost stayed. I had taken an assignment

uh in korea after the after i went to i came out of west point i went to ranger school i went to airborne school i went to the 82nd airborne um you know i trained there for three years we got deployed to the gulf i spent almost a year in saudi arabia and iraq as part of the first golf war and i came back and that the army wanted to send me to korea and i i volunteered to do that and then the army said they wanted to send me to graduate school after korea

And so they wanted me to apply in advance. So I applied to graduate school. And when you write the essays in graduate school, you know, the essays say, what do you want to do with your life? And, you know, when I wrote the essays, none of them ended with, I want to be a career military officer, or there was other things I wanted to do. And that prompted me to get out. And I had a year until grad school would start. I decided I was going to go to grad school. And so I traveled for a year, Jason, nine months to be specific. I traveled all around the world. I traveled through the Middle East and traveled through, uh,

By yourself or who did you go with? Yeah, I went to Turkey and Syria and Jordan and

to the West Bank and then to Israel, spent a long time in Israel. Then I went on to Asia. I spent time in China. I talk about it in the book. So I was in China when there was no skyscrapers, there were two currencies. And my dad was going through the roof at this point because my dad had been so happy about West Point. But he said, what do you think? You could have potentially been a general and you've lost your pension. 15 more years without a pension. And he couldn't believe this aimless guy. And then I went to grad school to college.

thinking I'd be a professor. My dad was a professor and I did a PhD. But when I got to the end, I said, oh my God, I can't be a professor. And I decided that I was going to go into business. And so my dad and my brother, who was a straight arrow, my brother was four years behind me, who did everything perfectly. They would have Sunday night phone calls about what are we going to do about Dave? He can't seem to find his way. And Jason, I'm just going to tell you, I'm 57 and

i think it was just about 10 years ago that my dad finally said you know i think it's going to be okay but it took a while but but i left grad school and i went to back to pittsburgh and i joined a consulting firm there for a couple years and then a small tech startup

And that tech startup, we took public and I became the CEO of it. And we had about a thousand people, 600 jobs in Pittsburgh. And it was part of the Pittsburgh Renaissance, you know, where Pittsburgh had

you know, had a slow death when steel, when the steel industry died in, in, um, the United States or most of it died. And, uh, and this was sort of the re reemergence of technology and advanced manufacturing and a number of things in Pittsburgh. And I, I was married and had, uh, four daughters, three of them in Pittsburgh. And, uh, and that was a great chapter. I lived in Pittsburgh for about a decade and it was a big part of, um, you know,

helping be part of the city that you know became the pittsburgh of today and then uh while i was there uh governor bush ran for uh for president and i um knew some people that were working for him and i helped write a couple of his speeches on national security and uh and then he won uh and went into uh

went into the presidency but i stayed in pittsburgh and ran that company for another four years and then i sold the company about the time that president bush won his second term and so i went into the government at that point and had a couple jobs one in the commerce department overseeing the technology exports which is a big talk today and i was you know in the early days

talking about the fear of China stealing our intellectual property and our technology. And so I wrote a number of articles and gave speeches about that. I was the undersecretary of commerce, and then the deputy national security advisor, and then ultimately the undersecretary of treasury. So in those four years, I got a lot of experience with China and global economics and national security. And a lot of the things that I'm talking about in the book, Superpower and Peril,

are based on those experiences about how the world was changing then and has changed so much since then. So even though I was – back to where I started, even though it looked like it was a straight line, there was lots of uncertainty along the way and some failure, which we can talk about, but a good bit of failure too. Yeah, what do you learn from failure? You know, people always say kind of almost as a trite –

afterthought oh you know failure is good you always learn from it but what did you learn from from failure nobody wants to go through it nobody likes it when it's happening

I had a whopper of a failure, which was very public, which I went to, after the government, I went and worked at Bridgewater, which is a big investment firm. And a couple of years in, I was appointed the co-CEO. The guy who founded it was a guy named Ray Dalio. He asked me to be the co-CEO, which I thought I was ready for. I'd been CEO before and so forth. And about 18 months later, he fired me. And this is very public. It was in the Wall Street Journal and

Here I was. I had this great job in the government and went to Bridgewater and had been promoted very quickly. And so I was in my mid-40s. I hadn't really had any big public failures. I had a lot of small failures, but this one was a whopper. And I didn't agree with it at the time, still don't agree with it in many ways, and I was very disappointed. And I thought about leaving Bridgewater.

I had these four little girls who had just been settled in a new place. And, uh, and so I said, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to just get them in a good place. I'm going to spend the next year or two staying at Bridgewater. The, uh, he asked me to stay, just didn't think I should be the CEO. And, uh, and I took a smaller job being in charge of our clients where I traveled around the country and, and the world and did that. And then, uh,

you know, started to take. And I started to do a lot better and started to think about some of the lessons I had learned. And then five years later, he asked me to be the CEO again. And, you know, this time we had a better understanding of what it took to be the CEO. And he had a better understanding of me. And I learned a lot of lessons. One of the lessons I learned was the need to drive change faster, faster.

You know, it's easy to get easy. It's easy to be complacent. It's easy to think that things are okay and not, not make things happen fast enough. And to really make change happen, you gotta be pretty, pretty dramatic, pretty radical, but you gotta make good change happen. You gotta rely on them realistic assignments. And so, so man, it was hard, but, but, but I learned to be a better leader and,

I learned to be a more empathetic leader because once you fail like that, you learn to see others failings and help them get through it. And I learned a lot of humility because, you know, it's when you fall on your face, you

You realize you're fallible. And then I learned resilience and strength. I feel much stronger now because I've failed and then succeeded than I think if I would have never failed and then been able to. It's sort of like the boxer who gets knocked down and then comes off the mat.

and, uh, and wins, wins the boxing match. That's, that's sort of how it felt. And, uh, and that's a great feeling and you make you a better leader. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with David McCormick right after this. No, there's a lot of truth to that. And, and, you know, some of these stories, these life stories about overcoming adversity and, and, uh, you know, then you have decisions, right? You can,

you can let it eat you up and spit you out and be the worst for it. But I'm convinced everybody goes through hardships and I don't know whether it be alcoholism or addiction or, you know, an accident or something's going to come your way or getting demoted in a very public way. I mean, those, those are all hard things to do, but let's fast forward a little bit. So

you know, you're having success, financial success. You've got this beautiful family. And then one day you wake up and say, you know, honey, I think I've, I got this great idea. I think we should, you know, leave that and just put ourselves up there as a public punching bag and get the crap knocked out of us. I think it'd be really good for the family. How did that conversation go down? You know, it was a multiple conversations, but, but I was feeling in, I guess this was

before but really before uh senator toomey decided he wasn't going to run again i was i was feeling really increasingly alarmed about the direction of the country and some people had uh and when when uh toomey said he was going to run again a number of folks had reached out and said hey would i ever consider it and to be honest with you we didn't we didn't take it very seriously at the time we just thought it would be too disruptive to our lives just for the reasons you've said

And then the Afghanistan thing happened, you know, this just disgraceful withdrawal, which is so counter to everything I think about America, America's role in the world, the kind of behavior that represents American values. And it just really made me, made me sick to my stomach. And we started to think hard about it. And, uh, we had some health issues in our family that we had delayed it. And, you know, we eventually said, you know what? Um,

We've been blessed. Both my wife and I, Dina. Dina, as you know, Jason, she's an immigrant from

Egypt. She's a Coptic Christian. Her family immigrated from Cairo to Dallas when she was five because they wanted to be able to practice their religious freedom here in the United States. And she's had this remarkable career in business and in government. And I've had great opportunities and a great career. And we just thought, we've been blessed. And those who have been blessed, more than others even, have an obligation to serve and try to do our part. So that was why

We jumped into it and we, you know, we had never, I'd never run for office. Neither of us had, we had served in government, but we, we really didn't know the thing that you already knew, which is man. It's like, you know, it's not for the faint of heart. And people ask me what it feel like. And I said, do you ever watch that movie gladiator? Yeah. Yeah. When you'd still in Russell Crowe's in the middle of the arena and people were up there throwing things down in the arena and then like the tiger, uh,

a trap comes open and the tiger jumps out and then he kills the tiger the next thing you know the chariot comes that's the way it fell so you got to be ready for it yeah and it was even on national television yeah on national television that's right exactly so um when you when you stepped away from it and and look you were very gracious about it because and that was a darn close primary um

When you step back and took a deep breath and maybe just kind of let the blood pressure come down a little bit, what were the positives? What were the negatives that you kind of walked away with from that? Well, yeah, as you said, it was, we lost by 900 votes of 1.4 million cast after a 17 day recount. So, you know, the emotional ups and downs of that. So you need a little time to decompress, but the, the,

By and large, there's a couple of negative things I'll talk about, but it was almost completely positive. The experience...

the opportunity to understand my state and know it better than I ever had before. I put 30,000 miles on a pickup truck driving, you know, these little communities, diners and fire holes and VFWs. And just the privilege to do that, to be able to do it, to know Pennsylvania better, to know America better, the reinforcement, the positive. So that was awesome. The new friendships, the understanding, the testing of myself, you know, I started as kind of a

mediocre to poor candidate. And I think I ended as a really strong candidate. It's not easy to just, as you know, it's not easy to go from being a CEO to being a, being a candidate. So, so it was great. And we felt like we were in, you know, in pursuit of something that was honorable and good and courageous. And so that was, that was by and large that experience. And that's why we wouldn't have, if we had to do it a hundred times over, we do it every time. The negative is,

is that it's so damn nasty. And you just get hit from all over the place to the point where I never even looked at social media. I would put out social media, but I would never look at the inbound because it's just nasty. And that can be debilitating if you let it get that way. And that was the biggest negative. And then the other negative is

you know, it was a tough primary and, you know, you got to go out there in the arena and promote your ideas and your, and yourself and,

And, um, and that, you know, that's tough. So, um, there was nothing, nothing that was surprising at some level, but the degree of nastiness in politics today, I think is, uh, it's unfortunate. And even though I was proud to do it and glad I did it, I understand why a lot of great people choose not to do it because it's, uh, it's not easy. My wife, Julie and I, we've been married, uh, 32 years.

So I'm pretty good at, and she's really good at when I walk around the corner, I can kind of see her face and I pretty much know how things, what she's, you know, good, bad, problematic. And I, there's a number of times you'd walk around and look, I won my elections and I want to buy huge margins. I was not nearly as close as, as your race was, but you know, I live in Utah, so it's, you know, it's a little different here. And, um,

I would look at her and I'd say, you've been reading the comments, haven't you? Like, don't read the comments. First of all, they're not true. There are bots that spit things out there. And I don't care if you just say the sun is important to life on earth. Somebody's going to beat you up for that. Like, you don't read the comments. They're not true. Like, just don't even do it. But they're like a magnet for us. You just can't.

But I know what you mean. It's so brutal and so personal. And you know what? I always took the attitude, you can beat the living crap out of me. But when it starts getting after your family and your kids or friends, it's like there's no place in politics and just human decency. But, you know, you went through it. Others have gone through it. And I appreciate you doing that. And do hope that there are a lot of us that do hope that you run again because I think you do have an awful lot to offer.

the country and the great state of Pennsylvania. You really do. - Yeah, thanks for saying that. We move obviously, people say, are you thinking about running again? And the answer is of course, how could you not? Because if you run because you believe you can contribute and you believe that you have a responsibility to do so and you think you can serve and then you lose a close race, it's not like the motivation to serve goes away.

Um, so, um, you know, I think we're, you know, both my wife and I are more committed than ever to serving. And then there's the question is what's the best way to do it? What's the best way for our family? What's the best way that we opportunity to do that. But, you know, big picture in there so often in life, you come to these crossroads and people choose not to take risk and not to, not to, to explore the thing that they've always wanted to do. And, you know, I'm, I feel,

fortunate that we did it and no regrets. All right. You've written a great book, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. You've done an awful lot of pushups serving in the military. You don't go into the 82nd Airborne without doing all that. But I don't care how many pushups and books you've written. These rapid questions I got to ask you, David, we'll see if you can get through them. Lay it on me, man. Lay it on me. All right. First concert you attended?

First big one was Journey in the Eagle Stadium. Oh, that's legit right there. Journey's coming to play our Stadium of Fire here in Utah on July 1st. Big concert, but...

You saw the legit Journey when they were like, I think Steve Perry. Yeah, exactly. But everything I hear about a Journey concert is good. So that'll be good. But that's a good first concert because mine was Michael Jackson, Mile High Stadium in Denver. So that, you know, that going for me. Yeah. What was your high school mascot?

Bloomsburg Panthers. That's legit. I was a Middle Park Panther in Granby, Colorado, was my graduating high school. Yeah, but we actually, you know, you and I, we had places that actually had Cougars, Mountain Lions, Panthers, if you will. Some of these places, you know, they, like...

I love her. Be honest with you. There's probably a better chance of seeing a Panther in Utah than in Pennsylvania. Or at least it was here in the United States of America. I'll give you that. So you named a few jobs earlier, but what was your first job? Not, hey, your mom and dad saying, hey, Dave, take the garbage out. Like, what was your first job where you got a paycheck?

Well, my first one I got a paycheck was paper boy. I was a paper boy where I deliver in the neighborhood. How early did you have to wake up and do that?

5 a.m. something like that. I delivered papers before school. But the one that was really kind of special, this is maybe when maybe I knew that there was a little politics in me at this point because I was a bus boy at the McGee Hotel. And the McGee Hotel was like the brunch place on Sunday mornings after church. And I would go in at like 435 on Sunday mornings and I would help the

the pastry chef make pastries. And then I was the bus boy, but this was after Saturday night football games. So I would hardly be able to move cause I'd be so banged up, but I would go bust the tables and you know, I get back in there and I'd start talking.

and everybody and uh you know the next thing the manager would come back and say hey i know you're friendly with everybody in this restaurant but you've got to bust the damn tables so what's your superpower and what i mean is you know we all have certain things we can do better than others and maybe yours is just busting tables but

What's the David McCormick superpower? I think it's grown. The one thing I'd say I do better and better now is I want people with different opinions. I want to get them in a room, and I am very good at drawing out.

the different sides of an argument and holding my own decisions at back until I've heard all the facts. And I always used to feel like I had to argue my case.

And when I became a CEO, I realized I don't have to argue the case. I just have to make the final decision. So everything I can do to make the odds better of making a good decision. So I'm pretty good at taking very strong-willed, opinionated people, getting them in a room, and coming out the other side with a decision that I feel good about. And that's taken a long time to get to that, but that's a superpower once you get it.

Yeah, not everybody can do that. Not everybody wants to do that. And that's having not only self-confidence, but also the ability to listen to divergent opinions and be able to synthesize that down to, all right, what's most important? What is the long-range vision? So I'm sure that served you well in the military, and it also probably served you well in business. And listen, you know this, having served at the highest levels of government. But

The big decisions are pretty much, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of, and I say, not say all decisions, but lots of decisions are 55, 45 decisions. You know, it's very, it's very rare that the decisions are so obvious that everybody just agrees to them because those kinds of decisions are already made. But, but to be a senior person, an executive, a government official,

that most of your time is dedicated to decisions that are actually close calls. And so the question is, how do you make the chances of your decision being a higher probability of being a good decision? If you start to think of your role as a leader as just a high probability decision-making machine, among other things, it starts to frame how you think about getting the opinions of others. Well, and that's one of the toughest things about being in Congress is

rare to none do you ever get a single subject, single issue vote. You know, what I'd have to explain to people is to say, okay, you liked or didn't like this vote. And, you know, it shows up in television commercials, shows up on Twitter. Oh, you voted for this. I say, well, you know, there are also 300 other items in that bill. And I had to weigh what was most important of those 300, even though you have to swallow some of the hard parts of

You either vote against it, vote for it. There are cases to be made. You're right. It's not a single subject. Easy. Yes or no. Of course, it's black or white. It's we never got those votes. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm saying that's not how you vote in Congress. It's just they just don't do it. And it's got we got to work on changing that. All right. Did you have a pet growing up?

I did. We lived in the college, and we had a couple Siberian Huskies, one right after another. And those are great dogs. Man, they like to run. So they would get away and run and crack them down. Well, at least you lived in the right part of the country. We spent a lot of time in Arizona, and I feel so bad for these Huskies that people are raising in Arizona. I'm like, why do you?

With all due respect, this Husky belongs up in Pennsylvania or Minnesota or somewhere up north where it actually gets cold. You can't have this Husky in Phoenix. Come on. Even the summers in Pennsylvania were too much. All right. Two more questions. Pineapple and pizza, yes or no?

Yes. Oh, David, we were on a roll. The judges do not like this answer, but okay. It would be my first choice, but I'm not going to throw out a pizza for a little pineapple. Fair enough. Yeah, I've had a lot of people say, well, Jason, I just pick off the pineapple. It's fine. Anyway, there's interesting arguments on this topic.

All right. Last question. Best advice you ever got. Best advice I ever got was if you find somebody that, you know, gives you the, you know, the joy and see something in you, you don't see in yourself, marry them. And I, and I did. Oh, that's great. That's great.

Well, listen, thank you for your service to the country. Thanks for writing this book, Superpower in Peril, A Battle Plan to Renew America. I've read through part of it. It's great. I love books with pictures. That's just me. I appreciate you. Didn't you get to see the actual what's going on? Anyway, good stuff. And good luck making the decision. It's a tough decision. But, boy, I think there are a lot of people out there that would be fascinated with your book.

and supportive of your running again for the United States Senate. I think you have a lot to offer given your array of experiences and success and challenges in life too. I think that's all part of it. And thanks for your generosity and your time here on the Jason and the House podcast. I do appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon, Jason. Thank you. Again, I can't thank David McCormick enough. I can't thank him for his service to our country, for the vision that he has for America, for his

Success. Success ought to be applauded. We ought to be looking at those factors of success and overcoming the challenges in life and making the most of it. That is the promise of the United States of America. It's the opportunity that is there. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That doesn't mean people aren't going to fall down. They're not going to hurt. They're not going to, you know, have challenges. Of course they are. But that pursuit of happiness is something that our country promises every person. And it's something we ought to strive for. But if we don't get our act together and put some things in motion, boy, oof.

We're in for some even rougher days ahead. So I can't thank David McCormick enough for his time. I'd appreciate it if you would rate this podcast. You have a chance to rate it. We would appreciate that. You can go over to the foxnewspodcast.com for other types of podcasts.

And I want to remind listeners that you can listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Again, rate it, subscribe to it, and we'll have another exciting person to come join us next week. But thanks for allowing us to spend part of your precious time with us, and we do appreciate it. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.

From the Fox News Podcast Network. In these ever-changing times, you can rely on Fox News for hourly updates for the very latest news and information on your time. Listen and download now at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.