By Dan McLaughlin
Monday, July 18, 2022
Ron DeSantis has a Donald Trump problem. How he
solves it — if he can — will be the first test of an important aspect of
presidential character.
Let us assume — as is widely assumed, but as yet
unannounced — that DeSantis would like to run for president in 2024. Many across
the Republican spectrum would like to see him do so. The trick is that DeSantis
needs to wrest the Republican nomination away from Trump, either by defeating
him or, better still, convincing him not to run. Harder still, he needs to do
so in a way that keeps Trump’s most passionate supporters behind him come that
November. It would be a Pyrrhic victory to defeat Trump in the way that
Napoleon captured Moscow in 1812, presiding over the burned-out shell of a city
surrounded by hundreds of miles of scorched earth in the onset of winter.
Therein lies the test of character.
While it can be easy to forget this in times of economic
turmoil and cultural conflict at home, the first and biggest job of the
president is to be the commander-in-chief of the military, chief diplomat of
the United States, and — ever since 1945 — the leader of the free world.
Today’s world is a complex and dangerous place, and a
great many foreign leaders are monsters, thugs, or bullies of one variety or
another: Xi, Putin, Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un, Assad, Erdogan, Modi, MBS, Maduro,
AMLO, Trudeau, Bolsonaro, Orbán, etc. Their methods, power bases, and need for
popular support varies, as do their personalities and their national cultures,
but all of them are accustomed to getting their own way.
In most cases, an American president cannot simply give
orders to these men, have them ousted, or have them killed. Other methods are
needed: They must be overawed, intimidated, bribed, cajoled, flattered,
deceived, charmed, inspired, bluffed, bullied, baffled, shamed, or engaged in
horse-trading. The tools deployed may be material, but the effect in each case must be psychological: getting them
to the point where they are willing do what we want, or willing to refrain from
doing what we don’t want. It’s a tricky business that requires deep reserves of
strategy, finesse, and firmness — and sometimes more. As Winston Churchill, who
knew a lot about statecraft and conflict, described the character required of a
great military commander:
There is required for the
composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning
power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original
and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.
This is why it represents such a great test of this
aspect of presidential character to face down Trump within a Republican
primary, where his own power base resides. DeSantis does not have the luxury of
a Democratic candidate, who can simply treat Trump as hostile and despised: He
relied on Trump’s fans and supporters to win his own first election in Florida
(with Trump’s endorsement), and will need many of them to win the nomination.
Yet if it comes to an open confrontation in which both
men run for the same office, DeSantis can also not afford to take the strategy
preferred by so many Trump opponents in 2016: namely, holding his fire while
Trump attacks him, and hoping somebody else will take him down. Even if that
seems like a workable early strategy, DeSantis has gotten this far by building
a brand as a fighter who doesn’t back down from anybody, and he should remember
the sage words of Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in
the mouth.”
The true coup would be if DeSantis can bluff or persuade
Trump not to run at all. It will be DeSantis’s job to convince Trump that Ron
DeSantis doesn’t have a Donald Trump problem; Trump has a Ron DeSantis problem.
Thus far in 2022, DeSantis has avoided confrontation. He knows that he needs a
convincing reelection in Florida before he can go national. He has not said a
cross word directly at Trump, and he has stayed out of primary contests
outside of Florida, which Trump has been treating as proxy battles to gauge and
burnish his own continuing influence within the party. At the same time,
DeSantis seems not to have sought Trump’s endorsement in his own reelection
bid. He has occasionally appeared to be road-testing national themes that
contrast him with Trump, such as criticizing federal lockdown policies under Trump.
Most of all, by showing no sign that he would defer to Trump and decline to
challenge him in 2024, DeSantis is playing a serious game of chicken. Trump,
for his part, has publicly bragged that he would beat DeSantis, and insists that he has not asked DeSantis whether he is
running.
Trump is reportedly itching to run again, and mounting
efforts to bring criminal charges against him are only going to make him more
eager to do so. But he has occasionally mused aloud about age and
health catching up to him. DeSantis could probably outraise him, given the
sentiment among Republican donors to move on to a better general-election bet
with fewer risks. Trump has to know that the worst possible thing for his
reputation would be losing a Republican primary after losing a national
election; nobody is going to believe it was stolen. By contrast, given his
significant accomplishments in office, the instant Trump steps
permanently out of active campaigning, even he will benefit from some of the
halo effect that builds around former presidents.
The road ahead for DeSantis in getting past Trump is full
of perils. But that is precisely why, if he manages to get there, he will have
proven himself to have a crucial component of the character required of an
American chief executive in an unstable world.
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