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Ron DeSantis’s God Complex Ron DeSantis’s God Complex
(1 day later)
After decades of closely observing and writing about American politics, I’m accustomed to the runaway religiosity of many political campaigns and to a whiff of theocracy in our democracy. But an ad that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida released in the final days of his successful re-election bid nonetheless took my breath away.After decades of closely observing and writing about American politics, I’m accustomed to the runaway religiosity of many political campaigns and to a whiff of theocracy in our democracy. But an ad that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida released in the final days of his successful re-election bid nonetheless took my breath away.
It’s possible you didn’t see it or read about it in the whirl of news and nervousness as the midterm finish line neared. But you must. And you must take in — and be prepared to take on — the staggering hubris and flamboyant piousness in it. In him.It’s possible you didn’t see it or read about it in the whirl of news and nervousness as the midterm finish line neared. But you must. And you must take in — and be prepared to take on — the staggering hubris and flamboyant piousness in it. In him.
Tweeted by his wife, Casey, with the apparent expectation that it would draw notice and go viral, it casts DeSantis not merely as a model and promoter of selected (and selective) religious principles — that’s commonplace for Republican leaders — but as a divine instrument, a holy messenger, fashioned precisely into his current form and set specifically on his present mission by God.Tweeted by his wife, Casey, with the apparent expectation that it would draw notice and go viral, it casts DeSantis not merely as a model and promoter of selected (and selective) religious principles — that’s commonplace for Republican leaders — but as a divine instrument, a holy messenger, fashioned precisely into his current form and set specifically on his present mission by God.
In little more than 90 seconds, its unseen narrator mentions “God” 10 times, beginning with the assertion that “on the eighth day” God gazed at a newly created world and decided that it needed a protector. “So God made a fighter,” the narrator says — sonorously, somberly. That’s the ad’s refrain, intoned again and again, and accompanied each time by a shining, commanding image of DeSantis.In little more than 90 seconds, its unseen narrator mentions “God” 10 times, beginning with the assertion that “on the eighth day” God gazed at a newly created world and decided that it needed a protector. “So God made a fighter,” the narrator says — sonorously, somberly. That’s the ad’s refrain, intoned again and again, and accompanied each time by a shining, commanding image of DeSantis.
The words seem to be a tweak of ones in a well-known speech, “So God Made a Farmer,” that the radio personality Paul Harvey delivered in 1978 to what was then known as the Future Farmers of America. But I don’t care about the precedent for the ad. I care about its implications. Or perhaps I should say its revelations.The words seem to be a tweak of ones in a well-known speech, “So God Made a Farmer,” that the radio personality Paul Harvey delivered in 1978 to what was then known as the Future Farmers of America. But I don’t care about the precedent for the ad. I care about its implications. Or perhaps I should say its revelations.
It makes clear, for starters, just how nuttily grand DeSantis’s sense of himself and his destiny is, an evaluation that the size and nature of his victory in the midterms is sure to cement. He beat his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, by nearly 20 percentage points. He won Miami-Dade County, a supposed Democratic refuge in a state that has turned increasingly red over the past decades. “We have rewritten the political map,” he crowed to his supporters at a victory party on Tuesday night. “Thank you for honoring us with a win for the ages.”It makes clear, for starters, just how nuttily grand DeSantis’s sense of himself and his destiny is, an evaluation that the size and nature of his victory in the midterms is sure to cement. He beat his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, by nearly 20 percentage points. He won Miami-Dade County, a supposed Democratic refuge in a state that has turned increasingly red over the past decades. “We have rewritten the political map,” he crowed to his supporters at a victory party on Tuesday night. “Thank you for honoring us with a win for the ages.”
Following that triumph, my colleague Ross Douthat raised the possibility that DeSantis is now the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner and cast him as an example of how potent a Trump heir with more emotional stability and administrative competence could be:Following that triumph, my colleague Ross Douthat raised the possibility that DeSantis is now the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner and cast him as an example of how potent a Trump heir with more emotional stability and administrative competence could be:
To me, DeSantis doesn’t seem quite so levelheaded. He picks and hypes battles designed to cast him as some conservative superhero. In that regard he’s histrionic and hyperbolic, and I could easily see him overplaying his hand, especially in regard to religion. The “God” ad signals that any presidential bid by DeSantis, who is clearly plotting one, will aggressively court Christian nationalists and, in the process, empower them. That was already becoming clear from his penchant for foregrounding biblical references in his oratory. During an appearance last February at Hillsdale College in Michigan — which is, of course, a pivotal presidential battleground state — he exhorted the audience: “Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes. You will face flaming arrows, but if you have the shield of faith, you will overcome them.”To me, DeSantis doesn’t seem quite so levelheaded. He picks and hypes battles designed to cast him as some conservative superhero. In that regard he’s histrionic and hyperbolic, and I could easily see him overplaying his hand, especially in regard to religion. The “God” ad signals that any presidential bid by DeSantis, who is clearly plotting one, will aggressively court Christian nationalists and, in the process, empower them. That was already becoming clear from his penchant for foregrounding biblical references in his oratory. During an appearance last February at Hillsdale College in Michigan — which is, of course, a pivotal presidential battleground state — he exhorted the audience: “Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes. You will face flaming arrows, but if you have the shield of faith, you will overcome them.”
DeSantis may need to use whatever shield he carries against Trump first. The former president and his minions are showing greater and greater annoyance with DeSantis’s success and, in particular, the signs that DeSantis would seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination regardless of whether Trump announces his own bid. Early this week, Trump suggested to a group of reporters that he had dirt on DeSantis and was prepared to spill it. “If he did run,” Trump said, “I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.”DeSantis may need to use whatever shield he carries against Trump first. The former president and his minions are showing greater and greater annoyance with DeSantis’s success and, in particular, the signs that DeSantis would seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination regardless of whether Trump announces his own bid. Early this week, Trump suggested to a group of reporters that he had dirt on DeSantis and was prepared to spill it. “If he did run,” Trump said, “I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.”
That’s highly unlikely to deter DeSantis, given how celestially high on himself he is. He brings to his political ambitions not just the customary cockiness but a more sinister zeal and grandiosity. No wonder he gets under Trump’s skin. They’re megalomaniacs of a feather.That’s highly unlikely to deter DeSantis, given how celestially high on himself he is. He brings to his political ambitions not just the customary cockiness but a more sinister zeal and grandiosity. No wonder he gets under Trump’s skin. They’re megalomaniacs of a feather.
Given how anxious — even terrified — many Democratic politicians were as the midterms neared, I don’t think the party’s better-than-expected performance will foster complacency. But it could prevent Democrats from asking themselves some tough questions and fully learning important lessons that have bearing not only on the party’s future but also on its fortunes in 2024.
Some polls before Tuesday showed that voters trusted Republicans more on the economy, more on crime, more on immigration, while Democrats were better on abortion and climate change. Abortion and climate change matter profoundly, but I wouldn’t want to go into any election as the candidate whose tribe supposedly shrugs at muggings.
Democrats need to inoculate themselves from that charge. That has been a challenge for them — or a version of it has — for decades, going back to when Bill Clinton was embracing capital punishment and denouncing Sister Souljah in what seemed to be an effort to reposition the party. Yet the rap persists. It recurs. And the party must land on a set of policies and a suite of talking points that send a different, more advantageous message.
And its leaders need to speak in a more relatable, less abstract language. Strive for equity but call it “opportunity.” Don’t surrender “values” and “freedom” to Republicans. Don’t let those concepts be defined in cinched and warped ways.
I caught a snippet of a recent speech by former President Barack Obama as he made the midterms case for Democrats, and I was impressed and moved by his assertion that what Democrats care most about and fight hardest for “has nothing to do, by the way, with political correctness or being too woke.”
“It’s about fundamental values that my grandparents from Kansas taught me,” he continued. “Values I grew up with, values you grew up with, values we try to teach our kids, values we learn in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples: honesty, fairness, opportunity, hard work.”
Notice which words he repeats, which he emphasizes. Notice how deftly and succinctly he works in the ideas of family, of worship. He’s on Republicans’ linguistic turf. And he’s owning it.
In The Philadelphia Inquirer, the sports columnist Mike Sielski weighed in on the playoffs and World Series performance of the outfielder Kyle Schwarber, invoking the memory of the band Led Zeppelin: “It’s not enough to call him the Phillies’ tone-setter. He’s not so much setting a tone as he is crashing through the front door, grabbing the first pair of drumsticks he sees, and going full John Bonham as his teammates reach for their guitars.” (Thanks to Brian Solodar of Ambler, Pa., for nominating this.)
Nick Welsh, the executive editor of The Santa Barbara Independent, reflected on the attack on Paul Pelosi and the misinformation that both preceded and followed it, observing that “our national political discourse has grown indistinguishable from zombie apocalypse TV shows” and wondering “whether we are what we watch or watch what we are.” (Mark Flannery, Fullerton, Calif.)
In The Washington Post, David Von Drehle described the lure of the Powerball lottery: “In the infinitesimal space between zero chance and the tiniest of chances, a lot of dreams can gather.” (Ellen Wolf, Bend, Ore.)
Also in The Post, Tim Carman presented a delightful meditation on soups, including this one: “Buried under this cloudy pork-based broth is a tangle of noodles so thin and reedy, they look like they might break under questioning.” (Joy Breese, Park Forest, Ill.)
And Susanna Schrobsdorff saw a nation’s dreads in its threads: “This year’s looks range from a survivalist vibe reminiscent of the final scenes of a ‘Mad Max’ movie to what can only be called emotional support clothing — i.e., pieces that look as though they’re made of marshmallows and the pelts of a thousand stuffed animals. Society appears to be having a sartorial fight-or-flight response to our collective angst.” (Randi Winter, Port Townsend, Wash.)
Poking fun at clichés, sportswriting and the intensifying American fascination with an oddly named game, Caira Conner wrote in The Atlantic: “Watch the highlight reel of the 2022 U.S. Open Pickleball Championships and your jaw … might stay right where it is.” (Evan Marc Katz, Los Angeles)
Also in The Atlantic, Elaine Godfrey described a rally that Barack Obama attended in Pennsylvania: “When the 44th president came onstage, the crowd greeted him like a long-lost friend — or a favorite teacher who’d returned after a series of varyingly unimpressive substitutes.” (Pamela Beck, Sacramento)
In an article in The Times Magazine titled “The Untold Story of Russiagate and the Road to War in Ukraine,” Jim Rutenberg recalled the scene of a key meeting of central players as “a perfectly put-up stage set for a caricature drama of furtive figures hatching covert schemes with questionable intent — a dark-lit cigar bar with mahogany-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling windows columned in thick velvet drapes, its leather club chairs typically filled by large men with open collars sipping Scotch and drawing on parejos and figurados. Men, that is, like Paul Manafort, with his dyed-black pompadour and penchant for pinstripes.” (Jane Rosen, Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J.)
Also in The Times, Caroline Fraser reviewed “The Ruin of All Witches,” in which Malcolm Gaskill travels back to Massachusetts in the 1600s: “As for his story’s relevance, Gaskill never mentions Donald Trump and his cries of ‘Witch hunt!’ or his QAnon fantasies. He doesn’t have to. Whatever hallucinations are arising from our current state, like smoke from a fire, it’s obvious they’re not much different from what was going up the chimney in the 1600s.” (Irma Wolfson, Baltimore)
And Alan Scherstuhl, writing about a new Louis Armstrong documentary, noted how the musician could hit “trumpet notes so high they tickled God’s toes.” (Rae-Ann Fischer, Manhattan, and Sam Chamberlin, Montgomery, Ohio)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, put “Sentences” in the subject line and include your name and place of residence.
Perhaps no Tuesday result pleased and calmed me more than the relative orderliness and smoothness of voting itself, as described in this article in The Times by Alan Feuer and put into eloquent and nuanced context in this column by my Times Opinion colleague Tom Friedman. I was also heartened by the decisions that voters made in states that had discrete abortion-rights measures on the ballot. The Times has a roundup of those results here.
Abortion is just one of many issues that I discussed with Jonathan Last, the editor of The Bulwark, and Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic state senator from Michigan, in a spirited political round table about the midterm results on Wednesday. You can read our conversation here.
You can read my recently published breakdown of possible Democratic presidential candidates if Joe Biden doesn’t run for re-election here.
“Why do I have to ring up my own groceries? Why do I have to bag my own groceries? Why do I have to get yelled at by the robo-nagger?” Those questions and more appear in an essay in The Washington Post by Rick Reilly that will make you nod and chuckle as it provides a welcome distraction and diversion from politics.
At Duke University on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 19, I’ll interview Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine, Melissa Harris-Perry of WNYC and Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post about the midterms, the media and the coming chapter of American politics. The event, called the Zeidman Colloquium, takes place from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at the Sanford School of Public Policy and is free and open to the public.
At the end of a roughly three-week Outward Bound course in Oregon when I was 17, I ran 13 miles, as I recall. All of us did, at the command of our instructors. They wanted us to realize how much strength and stamina we’d built during the long days of hiking and mountain climbing beforehand. They wanted our fitness memorialized.
About a decade later, I crossed the breadth of Michigan on a bike. And more than a decade after that, I did one of those mini triathlons, with an emphasis on mini: something like a half mile of swimming, a dozen miles of biking and a three-mile run. Hooray for me, not so much an Ironman as an aluminum one.
But I never trained for and attempted a marathon, much as I thought about it, much as I meant to. I just couldn’t step up, couldn’t buckle down, lacked the time, lacked the drive. It’s too late for me now — my endoskeleton wouldn’t survive it. That saddens me.
And my regret translates into my heightened attention and oversize pride when a friend or family member completes the 26.2-mile course, as my nephew Frank — named, like me, after my father — did on Sunday with his girlfriend, Holly, in New York City.
Until just the past few years, he and Holly weren’t big runners. But they wanted to set a goal, commit to the preparation for it, make an investment, reap the dividend. A marathon in that sense is a metaphor for life — hence its potent appeal, its mythic resonance.
I swapped text messages with him afterward, and his joy at having gone the distance was palpable. It lifted me up, too. I congratulate him and Holly and everyone else who ran or will run a marathon this year. You do the rest of us humans proud.
Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.