In the classic of the new political journalism What It Takes (What It Takes), Richard Ben Cramer followed the primary performance of six candidates for the 1988 United States elections, starting with a question: “What kind of faith could drive, say, a dozen winners?” “Do they habitually sacrifice their lives and those of their loved ones to participate in an embarrassing public dice game in which all but one are doomed to failure?”
That question should be asked of Ron DeSantis, who on Sunday admitted defeat and decided to abandon the campaign to obtain the Republican nomination after last week’s fiasco in the caucus of Iowa and a strategy plagued by miscalculations. And he had a good hand in the game of dice: he had just won his re-election as governor of Florida, in the same appointment with the polls in which the rival to beat, Donald Trump, took a serious blow. The Republicans finally seemed ready to lift the state of emergency imposed by Trump in the party since 2016, and DeSantis, a serial winner, seemed the ideal candidate to give the magnate the last push.
The media repeated it so much and the people wanted it so strongly. establishment Republican that DeSantis believed it was done. A little more than a year later, he has joined the long list of those who underestimated Trump, for whose candidacy he offered his support on Sunday in a resignation video, published two days before the second stop of the primary process, in New Hampshire. . He does it, DeSantis said, because he considers the former president “superior to any of the contenders, including [Joe] Biden”, and because he sees it as unacceptable “to return to the old Republican guard of yesteryear”. He also failed to add that he has made that decision, despite the fact that Trump has dedicated himself in recent months to insulting and ridiculing him.
The governor of Florida, who presented himself to voters as a version of Trump without the drama and shocks in which the magnate seems to live comfortably, did not take into account that his troubles with justice – with which he has unfinished business, among others, four criminal cases for a total of 91 crimes – were to once again catapult his fame among the conservative electorate. He cannot be blamed for this: Trump is an exceptional case in the history of American politics for many reasons, but above all because in his eight years on the scene he has gone through situations (the attack on the Capitol, two impeachments and countless accusations in court) that would have ended anyone else’s career, but only seem to make him stronger.
Another widespread diagnosis among the forensic experts of the corpse of DeSantis’ candidacy is that he took too long to jump into the race for the Republican nomination. Instead of doing so after the November 2022 elections (after which Trump, in a flight forward, an art he masters like no one else, immediately announced his intention to return to the White House), he spent half a year plucking the leaves, instead of jumping into the ring when the main opponent was lying on the canvas.
When he finally did, a disastrous presentation on Twitter served as an ominous preamble to a poorly managed campaign, whose protagonist avoided hand-to-hand combat with the former president for too long and which was weighed down by his robotic lack of charisma and his allergy to what in America is known as the art of “retail politics”, retail politics: contact with the voter, kissing children, shaking hands with the living forces, those things that require a talent that DeSantis clearly lacks.
The governor thought that he would not need it, and that it would be enough to present himself backed by his impressive resume (a Navy veteran and graduate of Harvard and Yale universities); for his reputation as an impeccable family man, with no hint of the kind of scandals that have plagued Trump since before he decided to run in 2015, and for the list of his achievements in Florida, which he never tired of presenting as “the land of freedom” in which “it woke”(progress) is going to die.
But on the latter, instead of falling short, he went too far: he carried out all the tough measures that he had promised in his re-election campaign, but he did so when the entire country was already looking at Tallahassee, the capital of the State, trying to interpret what it would be like to have DeSantis in the White House. What they saw was a politician who was tough on abortion, who wanted to set a six-week limit for the termination of pregnancy, when most women cannot know that they are pregnant. Also, an ultra with education and someone obsessed with cutting the rights of LGTBI people and attacking immigrants. All these measures do not they travel as well to other, more moderate parts of the country, as demonstrated by the Republican defeats where women’s reproductive freedom has been put to a referendum.
Driven away the sympathy of moderate voters, DeSantis proposed a megalomaniac campaign, designed by virtue of the enormous fundraising he achieved at the beginning and then slowed down; So much so that in the summer he was forced to fire half of his collaborators. He also did not know how to win over establishment of his party, and that surely honors his consistency: while he was a congressman in Washington, between 2013 and 2018, he did not leave much of a mark, but at least it was clear that he did not want to have anything to do with the old guard, and thus he participated in the foundation of the so-called Freedom Caucus, which brings together parliamentarians, extremists and, to a point, eccentrics, from the hardest wing of the party.
That refusal to offer an alternative that would bring together those who long for a future for American conservatism without the magnate was key to the rise of the rival who has ended up giving him the finishing touch, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the UN in the United States. Trump times in the White House.
In a conservative state like Iowa, where he spent tens of millions of dollars, Haley almost beat him; And what is worse, the governor of Florida did not take any of the 99 counties that he had dedicated himself to visiting in depth to search for every last vote. In New Hampshire, a much more hostile place for a conservative like DeSantis, the overtaking of Haley was taken for granted. “His strategy, sometimes defined as ‘Trumpism without Trump,’ assumed that Republican voters were willing to move on from Trump personally, even as they supported his views on the issues,” writes polling guru Nate Cohn in his newsletter for The New York Times. “Needless to say, it wasn’t like that. At the same time, his consistently conservative views on the issues alienated moderates and culminated in Haley’s rise.”
One of the doubts that DeSantis had when presenting himself was whether it would not be better to wait for the next elections, those of 2028. Time management is key in politics. And after all, this year’s events are a true anomaly, in which for the first time in history everything indicates that two tenants of the White House will face each other: the current one and the previous one, in a repeat of the duel from four years ago. . DeSantis supporters hope he will have better luck next time.
And Ben Cramer’s book proves that anything is possible. Among the six candidates he followed in those elections, which George Bush Sr. won, were Bod Dole, who was the Republican candidate who lost in 1996 to Bill Clinton, as well as a Delaware senator named Joe Biden, who would still be 32 years away. on having “what it takes” to be president of the United States.
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