Latest from Alex

Benghazi. The IRS. AP phone records. The failures for which Barack Obama will be remembered are not just those of one man or one administration. They are the failures of an old idea, that big, old, dumb, top-down, factory style government can manage the complexities of modern times. The institutions of the past had their day but can’t keep up with the hyper-connected, adaptive society we see emerging.

One hundred and sixty-five years ago, in Coloma, California, a carpenter named James W. Marshall built a sawmill to harness the power of the American River. Below the waterwheel, he saw flakes of metal where the spent water flowed. Marshall marked the moment saying, “I have found it.” He had discovered gold in California and more: For the next century, our nation would mine its future in the Golden State.

Republican or Democrat, we would all like to see a new era of progress and prosperity for our country. We all hope this president will allow our economy to be as successful as his campaigns were. To that end, perhaps we should explore if there is another, more modern way to deal with our evolving challenges and their accumulated complexity.

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About Alex

With nearly four decades of political and private sector consulting experience in the U.S. and around the globe, Alex Castellanos has developed communications strategies and campaigns for some of the world’s largest companies and helped elect U.S. Senators, Governors and Presidents. Castellanos co-founded Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm, appears regularly on Meet the Press and currently serves as a member of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television.”

In 2007, GQ Magazine named him one of the 50 Most Influential People in D.C. He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  He has also been credited with the discovery of the political “soccer-mom” and called “father of the attack ad.”

A native of Havana, Cuba, he is fluent in Spanish and English. His parents, refugees who fled Castro’s Cuba in 1961, came to this country with one suitcase, two children and eleven dollars.

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