Ron Desantis and the Art of Power
Few politicians use their power as deftly as Ron Desantis. Here's how he does it.
Ron Desantis’s brand has sometimes been described as “competent Trumpism.” He’s increasingly aligned with the wing of the GOP that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and now seeks to build on Trump’s legacy, but he seemingly lacks many of Trump’s liabilities. Where Trump often speaks recklessly, Desantis makes his case in a lawyerly fashion. Where Trump ignores low-hanging fruit, Desantis rarely misses an opportunity to consolidate his power. Where Trump wrote tweets, Desantis writes laws.
It’s no surprise, then, that at least one 2024 primary poll has found the two neck-and-neck. Whether or not Desantis becomes the next Republican nominee, much of what he’s doing is worthy of imitation.
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One of my early concerns about a potential Desantis nomination was that he didn't seem to be that ideologically populist, at least as I would define that term. As a congressman, he was a relatively standard Republican, and it seemed for a time that he had adopted the branding of Trumpism while neglecting its substance.
Happily, he turned out not to be a doctrinaire Reaganite either.
A more ideological conservative might have objected to a provision in Desantis’s anti-rioting bill that allows citizens to sue municipalities if they fail to protect their property. According to conservative orthodoxy on this topic, states shouldn’t restrict the behavior of municipalities, just as the federal government shouldn’t restrict the behavior of states. As a loose heuristic, there may be some value in this idea, but Desantis chose to selectively ignore it for the sake of addressing the rioting problem. And he was right to do so.
Similarly, when private companies took it upon themselves to set public health policy by demanding that consumers produce vaccine passports in exchange for service, he banned the practice. He recognizes that private companies can sometimes behave in ways that are of public concern, and he’s unafraid to use his power to defend the interests of Florida’s citizens.
This is how we must think going forward. We need to become more concerned with outcomes and less hung up on ossified ideas about the proper scope of political power.
Institutionalize Your Beliefs
Desantis recently signed a law mandating that the history of communism and totalitarian regimes be taught to public school students. After years of the right allowing the left to push anti-American moral framing uncontested, Desantis has not only sought to reverse this trend but actually to capitalize on it.
Similarly, he recently signed a law aimed at collecting data on the ideological leanings of students and faculty at Florida universities. Every concern the media has about this is well-founded. The point is obviously to institutionalize a new metric that will inform future policy interventions, actions geared towards reducing the stranglehold the left has on our universities. Based.
Take Power Away from Your Enemies
One of my favorite pieces of legislation that Desantis authored during his time in Congress was a bill that would have allowed states to set up their own higher ed accreditation boards. Purely on the merits, the bill made sense. It probably would spur badly needed innovation in higher ed if new models had more accreditation options and if different states could do things differently. And from a cynical, political perspective, it would be incredibly helpful to turn at least some authority over education policy back to the states, many of which are quite red.
Returning to the anti-rioting bill and the ban on COVID passports, here too Desantis’s strategy was simply to disempower institutions that stood in the way of his goals, such as certain municipalities and private companies.
The right talks a lot about founding new institutions and recapturing old ones. We don’t talk enough about using the immense political power we hold in many places to impose our will on these institutions. Desantis seems to get this intuitively.
In Celebration of Competence
The approaches I’ve outlined here aren’t meant to be exhaustive. They’re worth bringing up only as a starting point towards a new center-right that will elect hundreds of Desantises at all levels of government, regardless of what the future holds for the man himself.
He keeps winning because he's right. There's no substitute for being right.
Agrees, Desantis is the nominee in 2024 from where I sit, Trumpism without the baggage.