When the Playbook Fails: Welcome Back to ctrl+alt+persuade
I really didn't want to do this again.
When I put ctrl+alt+persuade on pause back in March, I was done with political theater. Exhausted by the endless ads, the tactical BS, the consultant wars that had nothing to do with actual governance. Like most voters, I just couldn't stomach it anymore.
My goal with this substack was always to play it straight - give an honest read of political ads, tactics, and strategy. But here's the thing: we're in the real world now.
Today there are armed soldiers on the streets of LA implementing a mass deportation plan that was was launched on outrageous claims about immigrants ‘eating the dogs…eating the cats.’ Now it’s targeting day laborers at Home Depot and 20-year employees of the local car wash.
President Trump made his thoughts on tariffs perfectly clear during the campaign, but political insiders and so-called “experts” ignored the talk because it wasn't "sexy" enough to capture voter attention.
Now the Port of Los Angeles is virtually empty. Thousands are out of work. The cost of goods is rising every day.
The theater was a distraction from reality. And that's exactly why I felt compelled to come back.
Voters saw right through it.
Trump, for all his chaos, at least sounded like he believed what he was saying. Democrats sounded like they were reading from scripts that tested well in suburban Phoenix.
That's not strategy - that's political malpractice disguised as sophistication.
The $900 Million Dollar Validation
I didn't plan to come back. After watching hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of election content and lecturing on it to students during one of the most chaotic election cycles in recent history, I was out. Finished.
But this week, The Atlantic published confirmation of what I’ve been screaming into the void for over a year.
Future Forward—the super PAC backing Harris—spent $900 million on economic messaging. Meanwhile, Harris’s internal team spent hundreds of millions on personal attacks.
Two factions. Two strategies. $2 billion. One incoherent mess.
"We should have been one streamlined engine whose true mission was to elect Kamala Harris and defeat Donald Trump. And it is clear that that was not always what happened." —Rufus Gifford, Harris Campaign
This isn't just campaign malpractice. This is exactly the systems failure I documented for over a year—tactical optimization replacing strategic coherence, data worship substituting for strategic thinking.
And the results speak for themselves.
If you’ve followed me for broader strategy insights, here’s the context:
Whether you lean left, right, or just want to stay focused on business, we’re all confronting the same thing: policy decisions are reshaping strategy everywhere. That’s why I built Strategy First. But I’m also bringing ctrl+alt+persuade back—because the political arena is where these breakdowns are most visible, and most urgent.
So yes, this will get political. But the goal remains the same: honest, strategic analysis of what’s actually happening—not what we wish were happening.
The Philosophical Turn
In this unprecedented moment, I haven’t turned to political science textbooks or party memos.
I’ve turned to philosophy.
20th Century thinkers like Camus, Arendt, and Simone Weil weren’t just reacting to chaos—they were providing frameworks for surviving it with dignity.
I once told my students, at the end of a year teaching political comms: “Campaigns are theater. Governing is reality.” I said it half in jest, but I meant it. I had spent two decades working in campaigns, believing in message discipline and ad strategy. But the election of a president who treated governance as performance—and governing institutions as obstacles—shook something loose.
It made me realize something Camusian: that clarity, even when it reveals absurdity, is the beginning of resistance.
Camus wrote about the absurd: the gap between our search for meaning and a world that refuses to deliver it. But he didn’t counsel despair. He argued for conscious revolt—lucid refusal to participate in the lie.
That’s where we are now. We’re asked to trust institutions performing collapse in real time. We’re told the system works—even as it rigs outcomes and normalizes dysfunction. We’re handed scripts and told to stay “on message” while reality dissolves.
For the first time in my political career, despite years of partisan battles and policy disagreements, I feel a genuine dread about the future of democratic governance itself.
The Camusian response isn't retreat into partisan comfort zones or joining protests for their own sake. It's looking the brokenness in the face and still choosing authentic action.
What I've Been Building Instead
While Democratic consultants were fighting over whether to call Trump "unhinged" or stick to economic messaging, I've been stepping back to ask a bigger question: What if political dysfunction isn't just an error to fix—but a condition to navigate strategically?
That reframe led me to Albert Camus and his analysis of systematic breakdown. When systems become fundamentally absurd, Camus identified three responses:
Retreat into comfortable delusions
Disengage entirely
Revolt with clarity and purpose
That third path—conscious revolt—is what I've been developing for political strategy specifically. Not theory, but practical frameworks for authentic engagement when traditional approaches fail.
But politics is just one domain where strategic thinking matters. Since March, I've been building Strategy First to examine these patterns everywhere: AI disruption, business crisis navigation, institutional breakdown across sectors.
Because here's what I've realized: strategic thinking is strategic thinking, whether you're navigating political dysfunction or any other form of systematic change.
Two Platforms, Same Strategic Framework
Since March, I've been building Strategy First to examine these patterns across domains: AI's disruption of institutions, crisis strategy for systematic breakdown, authentic leadership frameworks that bypass captured intermediaries.
But political analysis remains crucial—the stakes are too high to abandon. That's why I'm bringing ctrl+alt+persuade back.
Two platforms, complementary missions:
ctrl+alt+persuade: Political strategy based on authentic engagement rather than consultant-driven theatrics
Strategy First: Strategic thinking for business, AI, and institutional change
Both tackle the same core challenge: How do you think strategically when the rules themselves are changing?
What Comes Next
Here’s what I’m working on—because the old playbook isn’t just outdated, it’s dangerous:
The Camus Framework for Political Leadership
How to practice authentic engagement when everyone else is performing politics.The Exhausted Majority Coalition
Cross-partisan strategy for voters disgusted with political performance.The Authentic Opposition Spectrum
Sanders fights oligarchy, Tesla boycotts hit Musk where it hurts, Newsom grabs the mic, Carville plays rope-a-dope. All solid moves. What's the bigger game?Strategy First Tools
The frameworks I’m building work across domains—AI disruption, economic instability, media collapse. Because strategic thinking isn’t partisan. It’s pattern recognition under pressure.
Welcome Back to ctrl+alt+persuade
Because sometimes you have to delete everything to build something that actually works.
Whether you're frustrated by consultant capture, exhausted by political theater, or trying to figure out how to act with integrity when the rules keep changing, the frameworks we'll explore offer practical paths forward.
Strategic thinking is strategic thinking, whether you're building authentic political movements or navigating any other form of systematic breakdown.
Ready to move beyond political theater?
P.S. – The next post breaks down the Camus framework in detail, showing how conscious revolt translates into practical political strategy that bypasses consultant dysfunction entirely.
Welcome back! Great frameworks leading us all to conscious action. Well done!