Should DeSantis Run as the Angry Warrior (Trump) or the Happy Warrior (Reagan)?

Neither, because it's not 1980 and it's not 2016 either.

How does a person win the Presidency? A great deal has been written about that, and I’ll confess I’ve read only a smattering of it. But I’ve paid attention to politics for a long time, and this is my theory: A person gets to be President by understanding, even if only intuitively, what the country really wants, and supplying a plausible way to get there.

Ronald Reagan did it in 1980 by seeing that the country wanted to feel good about itself again, after years of being beaten down by Carter’s wimpy fecklessness, his runaway inflation, his galling, weak-kneed helplessness in the face of the hostage crisis, and generally his “malaise.” The contrast with Reagan’s strength and optimism, his vision of the United States as the “Shining City on the Hill,” was too much for the electorate to resist, and it gave him a landslide.

Donald Trump did it in 2016 by seeing, to put it very roughly, that the country wanted to kick over the table. It wasn’t happy with Obama’s eight year-long Apology Tour, and was even less happy with the prospect that Obama would be succeeded by the very epitome of elitist, insider corruption, Hillary Clinton. To say the least, of course, Trump was no Reagan. He was rude and crude, aggressive and angry. As it turned out, the country itself was just angry enough to give him the White House, albeit without a popular vote majority and for one term only.

The Republican Party must now decide who its candidate will be next year. The only plausible candidates at the moment are Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Which of them has a better vision of what the country wants, and which presents a plausible way to get there?

The beginnings of an answer are provided in this piece by Richard Hanania, titled, “Selling a Positive Culture War Message.” The title itself tells you what, in my view, the county very much wants, even if only subliminally for the moment: A candidate who understands that we are in a war for the foundations of American life, and who aims to win that war on America’s terms. This is, in brief, the war about Wokeism that Paul recently discussed. Merely Trump’s anger won’t get it done; anger might well be a place to start, but without the thoughtfulness, historical understanding and maturity that Trump nowhere displays, it soon becomes, not merely counter-productive, but self-defeating.

I begin my exploration with a conclusion that surprises me, and that I dislike, but that the electoral facts seem pretty much to support — that on the surface anyway, the country simply is not that angry right now. It’s true that the right track/wrong track polling is in the dumpster, and that Biden remains underwater. But, to state the obvious, what counts for electoral purposes is elections, and we had a big one recently with a boatload of bad news. Last November, Republicans vastly under-performed both informed expectations and longstanding historical off-year trends. Despite raging inflation, an uptick in crime, a major war in Europe and a decrepit, unpopular President, Democrats gained a seat (and firmer control) in the Senate, only barely lost control of the House, and made slight but noticeable gains is state legislatures. The country is simply not rumbling with discontent, and to the extent it is, obviously it does not see the Republican Party as the answer.

What do we need to do in next year’s election to get this changed?

Hanania has some insightful observations, centering less on what is presented and more on how it gets presented:

[I]deologically extreme candidates tend to be the angriest ones, or those that play to an angry base, and it’s the anger that [most] voters respond to and are repulsed by.

Anger worked for Trump once, barely, but it’s unlikely to work again because (1) odd as it may be, the country seems to be less angry than it was after eight grating years of Obama, and, more importantly, (2) Trump is more angry about, if not obsessed with, the election of 2020, something a big majority of voters have left in the past, even to the limited extent that some of them agree with him about its character.

Hanania continues (emphasis added):

Republicans are increasingly in their own bubble, which is why the rhetoric of the party gets…..more alienating to voters. Think of talk of stolen elections, using the Second Amendment to protect against tyranny, or the relatively minor story of a train derailment in Ohio….

Political messagings stand out because people in politics are probably angrier about the state of the world than most who work in advertising, which is why they became activists in the first place. In a two-party system, the side that gives in less to the temptation to indulge in its grievances is at an advantage. Right now, this is the Democrats. Republican governors [DeSantis being one] do less playing to the right-wing media bubble than national politicians, which can explain why they tend to be more popular than them too. Increasing wokeness hurts the left electorally, but it’s been balanced out by the rise of grievance politics on the right — if the Republican Party of 2000 or 2010 could run against the Democrats of 2022, they’d win easily. And a major difference between the two sides is that while major Democratic politicians like Biden avoid the most extreme woke whining…on the Republican side the politicians are themselves pioneering new forms of grievance.

Generally, being happier and calmer in an interaction is a way to signal higher status... If you are going to be angry, it’s higher status to be angry over something that’s being done to someone else, rather than portraying yourself as a victim. Democrats claim the mantle of the oppressed, but the difference is in Republican messaging it’s they themselves who are the victims, because they have elections stolen from them, the media treats them unfairly, or not enough people see their tweets. Sometimes these grievances are getting at something true (and sometimes they’re made up), but even when they have a point these are often unseemly things for politicians to prioritize.

Ladies and gentlemen, we just need to learn from what’s in front of our eyes. The Democrats’ sometimes disguised (and sometimes not so disguised) embrace of Wokeism has millions of actual victims in every part of the country — namely, our children, whose education is being traded in for Leftist subversion and not-very-well-hidden anti-American propaganda. When Glenn Youngkin told the Virginia electorate that parents and not the Educational Establishment should decide what their children will be taught, he won the governor’s chair in an increasingly Democratic state. When Ron DeSantis took on the Woke shading of the biggest children’s attraction in the country, Disneyland, he turned a swing state into a Republican landslide.

When we’re on the right side of an issue, and the issue wins elections, why on earth are we talking about anything else?

The most important remaining question is how best to expose Wokeism.

There seem to be two types of opposition to wokeness. One is simply negative and reactive, getting angry at pronoun announcements and talk of white privilege without putting these things into any larger context than “this is dumb.” This appeals to the unhappy…and alienates a lot of people who otherwise share the concerns that many conservatives have. It signals “I’m a loser, the world is scary and confusing, join me too if you’re scared…”

The other way to oppose wokeness is to be angry at the phenomenon because it gets in the way of a more positive vision, whether that’s the Enlightenment project, national greatness, or getting to Mars….The high-status way to oppose wokeness runs away from conspiracy theories, which are not only false and stupid, but have the added effect of portraying one’s opponents as extremely smart, successful, and competent. High-status opposition to wokeness is not only better electorally, but will bring higher quality individuals to the cause that will be willing and able to focus on making important policy changes….

[Newly announced Republican candidate Vivek] Ramaswamy’s pitch does a good job of avoiding loser vibes while combining optimism about America, opposition to wokeness, and constructive theories about where it came from and what to do about it. He talks about ESG, not capitalism as a natural force for social revolution; the need to undo an executive order mandating affirmative action, not to fight a “deep state” cabal conspiring against Republicans; and the need for an immigration system based on merit, rather than a globalist conspiracy to flood first world countries.

In later entries I hope to detail how DeSantis has taken on Wokeness and its handmaidens, including cowardice, sloth and dishonesty. Suffice it for now to say that he wrestled with these things, probably more directly and successfully than any other governor. I’m sure readers will recall that DeSantis kept his state’s schools and businesses open to a greater degree during the Left’s COVID Festival than practically any other state leader. To me, this signals that DeSantis is the Republicans’ best choice for understanding what the country wants, and providing the most hopeful path for getting there.

Finally, for those who think I’ve been too hard on Trump in this piece, I’ll say this. It was Trump who, albeit without the needed degree of articulation or even understanding, first focused on the corruption, arrogance and deceit that Wokeness feeds upon. He did this in the face of a viciously hostile press and ridicule from numerous Republicans. He earned some of the ridicule to be sure, and in no way was he the right person to lead the national discussion we urgently need. But still — without him, would the coming Presidential race be having it at all?