Against my better judgment, I wrote about Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for NYTimes Opinion on Monday. Read it here.
Basically, I was trying to answer this question: Everybody seems to agree that DeSantis is the more “competent” candidate — like “Trump with a brain,” as profiles in both The New Yorker and the Financial Times have put it — but what does that mean? Will that help DeSantis in the primary? What if it doesn’t?
The story of Donnie and Ronnie (as foils) practically writes itself: Where Trump is a slothful child of privilege who inherited a fortune; DeSantis is a meritocrat who fought his way into the American elite (Yale, Harvard, and US Congress). Where Trump evaded the draft, DeSantis volunteered to serve. As an executive, Trump was erratic and impulsive; DeSantis, by all accounts, is calculating and prudent. Where Trump is hyper-social, surrounding himself with yes-men competing for his favor, DeSantis is aloof, keeping his own counsel (and that of his wife, Casey) while eschewing a brain trust or coterie of hangers-on.
And whereas Trump possesses a notoriously short attention span — neglecting to read intelligence briefings or internalize policy particulars — DeSantis is known as a disciplined and voracious reader with a near-photographic memory. As an ally told Joshua Chaffin of the Financial Times, “He’s a data guy who understands all the details.”
It’s become something of a shibboleth for their rivalry: Ron, the disciplined Ivy Leaguer; Don, the clownish dimwit. Partisans and pundits may disagree about the import of this contrast — e.g. would a more meticulous, focused Trump be better or worse for the country? — but I’ve noticed a remarkable degree of unanimity about its plausibility. “While Trump, with his lazy, Barnumesque persona, projects a fundamental lack of seriousness,” writes Dexter Filkins in a New Yorker profile of the governor, “DeSantis has an intense work ethic, a formidable intelligence, and a granular understanding of policy.” According to this emerging consensus, a DeSantis presidency would differ from Trump’s not so much in ideology, as in execution.
But submerged in this discourse (I believe) is a more complex, unresolved, and vexing question (for conservatives and liberals alike): to what extent did the Trump years represent a revolt against elite competence as such, against rule by “the best and brightest” and the notion that only certain people with certain talents, credentials, professional pedigrees, and subject matter expertise are capable of governing a 21st century empire? And to what extent is that revolt an irreducible part of Trump’s appeal? To put it bluntly, to what extent is Trumpism “with a brain” still Trumpism?
After all, a crisis of legitimacy for American elites, for the sorts of highly qualified and capable people who attend Harvard and Yale, lead us into protracted wars, gamble away our retirement savings, and crash the global economy, was brewing long before Trump descended the proverbial escalator. In this way, Trump’s faults, his manifest incompetence, his disdain for expertise and politesse, and, perhaps especially, his bitterness toward anyone who makes him feel less-than (“Trump is said to bristle at mentions of DeSantis’s formidable intellect,” FT reports), were all part of his appeal. If not admiration, these failings inspire identification, sympathy, even fealty. Trump’s enduring message was this: the people looking down on me are looking down on you too. And he wasn’t wrong.
We all remember when Trump told a crowd in February 2016, “I love the poorly educated.” But we tend to forget the next line, in which he included himself among their lot: “We're the smartest people, we're the most loyal people.”
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I even got the Times to let me include some Christopher Lasch in the piece — which no doubt will please some of you and annoy others. Either way, please give it a read. Apparently, Steve Bannon enjoyed it. As he told his audience on Rumble: “He’s a brilliant guy; he hates you.” (I’ll take it.)
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Finally, a few weeks ago, the Washington Post published my review of a new book about the John Birch Society by Matthew Dallek. I thought the book was quite good, with some reservations. This is how I closed the piece. If you’re familiar with my work, I’m sure you can spot the irony. (I did mean to implicate myself.)
There can be little doubt that the tone and tactics of Trumpism are “Birchite.” And Dallek’s account — of the “halting” and clumsy effort by conservatives to simultaneously exploit and contain Bircher energies — is both well-told and depressingly familiar. But like others in the booming cottage industry of “explaining the right to terrified liberals,” his analysis risks overpromising; readers hunger for the cleanest possible story about “how we got here,” but historians should resist the impulse to elide important distinctions to sate their appetite. As Leo Ribuffo, the great historian and author of “The Old Christian Right,” once wrote, “What historians are supposed to do is to sort out continuity and change, similarity and difference.” It’s easier said than done.
Thanks everyone for reading. Happy springtime. Cheers.
I appreciate when you let us know, Sam