Heating Up

“That Hansel is so hot right now.” - Mugatu in Zoolander

That was one of my favorite movies coming up. I later got to meet Ben Stiller, who shot me a ‘Blue Steel’ tweet during one of my campaigns. It was a highlight.

A little more than eight years ago, I started running for President in February of 2018. My campaign was announced with a NYTimes article called, “The Robots are Coming.”

No one cared.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I only later learned that trying to get someone’s attention about a presidential race almost 36 months ahead of the general election was something of a fool’s errand. Just about all of the other candidates would declare after the midterms that November. There’s an ebb and flow to these things, and energy around the presidential only started running hot in mid-2019 when televised debates hit the airwaves.

In my case, the 12 months or so to have the field to myself were a godsend. I got to get comfortable campaigning, hone the message, build a little bit of a following and get my feet under me. Heck, in my case the biggest thing was getting added to the polls at all, which required me stumping around Iowa and New Hampshire for months in order to register.

Thank you if you were a part of that campaign. I was anonymous when it launched and together we mainstreamed a number of ideas that are all the more relevant today.

The energy maxed out in 2020 when the voting started. There were crowds everywhere I went, and my job was to rev them up. I compared it to holding a live wire, where you’re channeling a movement and trying to grow it.

My day-to-day was a barometer for how we were doing. People recognize you on the street and give you a thumbs up? That’s a great sign. I would see MATH hats in the wild routinely. You could actually feel for yourself what was happening in real-time.

It’s hard to believe that six years have passed. The past six years have been busy. I wrote a book or two, started a company and kicked off a political party. But not much compares with the electricity of a presidential campaign. My wife Evelyn recently pulled up a video of me saying “Chant my name!” in jest to a crowd of hundreds at a rally in Washington D.C.

I’m not someone who chases the energy in that way – I’m not naturally an extrovert or an adrenaline junkie. My idea of a great time is reading and writing, or spending time with my family. I didn’t run in 2020 to gain notoriety, but instead to advance solutions I believed would be necessary.

Lately, I’ve felt the energy around me picking up again.

Maybe it’s because AI is on everyone’s minds. Maybe it’s because several of my takes – AI eating the jobs, the need for UBI, the polarization of the two-party system, Joe Biden needing a primary – have aged well. Maybe it’s because more and more people are waking up to the deteriorating state of our institutions.

A friend over dinner complimented me the other night and said, “Somehow, you’ve managed to stay relevant pretty much the whole time since 2020.”

It was a nice sentiment, though I’m not sure he’s completely right. Sometimes it’s something you do, and sometimes the wave comes to you. When it comes, you do all you can to ride it.

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