A few weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post laying out what Florida governor Ron DeSantis offers Republicans, independents, and Democrats as a potential presidential candidate that Donald Trump does not. As you would imagine, the reaction on social media has been thoughtful, well considered, even-tempered, and well informed — no, I can’t even keep a straight face typing all that.
Earlier today, someone reacted to that op-ed with the assertion that DeSantis is just a younger, less educated version of Trump.
DeSantis is a younger version of trump. He may actually be a less educated version as well, which is scary.
— Jane L. (@JLustwerk) November 28, 2022
As I wrote in the op-ed, “when DeSantis launches his presidential candidacy (let’s assume it for these purposes), Trump fans and Democrats alike can be counted on to amplify a common barb about DeSantis: that he isn’t very smart. The governor apparently lucked into Yale undergrad and Harvard Law School.”
I’m not saying you have to like Ron DeSantis. I’m not saying he’s always going to make the right decision. You may well disagree with a whole lot of DeSantis’s decisions. But I do think a guy with Yale undergrad and Harvard Law School and service as a legal adviser to a SEAL team in Iraq and a successful stint as a federal prosecutor and what he’s done as a congressman and as a governor and having run a reelection bid that won a landslide in a previously evenly-split state . . . I think if you add all of that up, you find a guy who is probably not dumb. I’m not saying all of these past experiences are surefire, 100 percent indicators of a lot of brain cells at work. Maybe you’ve met some people who went to Harvard whom you wouldn’t trust to cross the street by themselves. But if a person is successful in one chapter of life after another, they’ve probably got something going on upstairs.
“Not dumb” does not necessarily mean smarter than you; maybe you’re really smart! But in some people’s minds, conceding that DeSantis is not dumb would bring their entire political worldview crashing down. All Republicans must be dumb, just as they must always be insane, and always be greedy and selfish, and so on.
Welcome to the tiring world of political demonization, where every foe who comes down the pike must be the repository of all negative traits and attributes, even if those traits contradict. The political enemy du jour is simultaneously an idiot and an evil mastermind, personally repellent and lacking charisma while simultaneously being a seductive and manipulative snake-oil salesman, and a bumbling inexperienced amateur who is somehow also part of the old calcified establishment who’s been in power too long.
It’s all so tiresome, and so self-evidently an attempt to throw every criticism simultaneously to see what sticks.