As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign continues to flounder — its latest reboot culminating with a new campaign manager — many pundits and observers are asking the same question: How does someone who is so bad at politics become governor of the nation’s third-largest state?
But they’re looking at it wrong.
DeSantis isn’t bad at politics. He’s won open nominations for a U.S. House seat and then for governor. He was reelected by a sizable margin. His early presidential campaign attracted plenty of positive attention and support.
Those are all signs that he has at least basic political competence.
But presidential politics are different and lots of skilled politicians fall short at this level, not because they weren’t good enough but because only one candidate per party per cycle can win.
That doesn’t mean I’m predicting he’s going to win the Republican nomination. Former President Donald Trump likely had it wrapped up from the moment he decided to run again.
Even if Trump fails there will still only be one candidate standing at the end. That’s the nature of the game.
But we can learn a lot from how bad DeSantis looks right now.
To begin with, every candidate looks terrible when they’re losing. Joe Biden looked old and out-of-touch with the new Democratic Party after the 2020 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Everyone suddenly remembered that Biden had washed out of the 1988 and 2008 nomination contests without winning a single delegate.
Two weeks later, Biden was the nominee. Some personal traits (Trump’s bluster, Biden’s tendency to shoot off his mouth, Jimmy Carter’s micromanaging/attention to detail) look like flaws when things are going badly but are recast as strengths when they’re winning.
DeSantis is also struggling because politics at the national level is a lot different than at the state level. Senators and governors can control much of their own press coverage. Even most negative stories are short-lived, coming and going in a day or two with many voters barely noticing.
That’s always been true and the difference is even more stark now as local news atrophies while national news media is more robust than ever.
Trump was the rare first-time presidential candidate who had ample experience with the national media when he ran in 2016. Presidential campaigns are also much larger operations to manage than even big-state senate or gubernatorial campaigns.
Virtually every candidate making the jump from a statewide to national campaign has a steep learning curve, DeSantis included. That doesn’t make him a bad politician, it makes him normal.
Remember, we’re basically talking about winning nominations. Almost any candidate capable of winning a major-party nomination can win a general election if the district and election cycle favor his or her party. That’s because strong partisan polarization in the electorate means the performance difference between a generic candidate and a bad candidate from the same party aren’t going to be very large in most cases.
Again, I’m not predicting anything. If DeSantis has a bad night Wednesday in the first Republican debate, it’s possible his campaign will be over, an early and disappointing washout.
If he has a good night, Republicans will remember that he’s still second behind Trump in the polls and second in high-profile endorsements, in both cases by a solid margin over the rest of the field.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the media tired of the “DeSantis is slumping” story and, given a plausible excuse to do so, switched to a “DeSantis surging” story.
The point is that lots of candidates are good enough politicians to win presidential nominations. It’s simply an illusion that only the winner (or perhaps only the winner and close runners-up) have “What It Takes” to win.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy.
