There's an old story about a dog food brand that was rapidly losing business. An emergency meeting was held to determine the cause. The can is the wrong color, complained one company official. The advertising jingle is off-key, said another. Finally, a fellow in the back spoke the truth: "Dogs don't like it."
There are many reasons why Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida crashed and burned as a presidential candidate, but much of the explanation comes down to one simple conclusion: Voters didn't like him.
In fact, former Republican Rep. David Jolly, who served with DeSantis, called his old colleague a "uniquely unlikable person" on MSNBC. "As you get to know him, you discover it's this odd mix of vanity and paranoia and kind of the smartest-person-in-the-room complex," Jolly explained.
With Donald Trump virtually clinching the Republican nomination with his decisive victory in New Hampshire, former rivals like DeSantis will rapidly fade away. But it's worth analyzing exactly what went wrong with a campaign that once seemed so promising.
Candidates who are highly successful on the state level -- DeSantis cruised to a second term in 2022 -- can often flame out on the national stage. They have no idea that when you run for president, the spotlight is much brighter, the scrutiny much tougher and the standards much higher.
The difference starts with personality. Governors can be successful as technocrats and problem-solvers, but aspirants for the Oval Office must connect with voters on an emotional level.
At a minimum, voters want someone who is inspiring or likable. The best candidates -- Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama -- are both. Trump is inspiring, but not likable. Joe Biden is the opposite. DeSantis is like Hillary Clinton, lacking in both essential qualities.
The New York Times interviewed Stephen Scaer, a 66-year-old DeSantis supporter in New Hampshire who asked his candidate a question about First Amendment rights and elicited an incoherent four-minute answer. "He lacks charisma," Scaer lamented later. "He just doesn't have that."
"There was a superficial impression that DeSantis was in the mode of big-state governors who had won Republican nominations and been successful -- Reagan, Bush, Romney -- but DeSantis is a very different sort of creature," explained veteran GOP strategist Stuart Stevens in the Times. "These were positive, expansive, optimistic figures. DeSantis is not."
DeSantis failed policy tests as well as personal ones, referring early on to the Ukraine conflict as a "territorial dispute" between Kyiv and Moscow. When you are the governor of Florida, holding court in Tallahassee, no one gives a fig what you think about Ukraine. But if you want to be president, you are measured by a very different metric. DeSantis' statement started many heads shaking that never really stopped.
The governor made another rookie mistake: He failed to define clearly who he was or why he was running. At times he tried to outflank Trump on the right, signing an abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy and accusing the ex-president of not completing his famous wall along the southern border. But there is no lane to the right of Trump in Republican politics; there's not even a shoulder -- just a concrete barrier DeSantis kept ramming into.
At other times, DeSantis seemed petrified of alienating Trump supporters and offered himself as a younger and perhaps more electable version of Trump. But as Whit Ayres, a seasoned GOP pollster who worked for DeSantis in 2018, told Politico: "They're not going to settle for a second-best Trump if they can get Trump himself."
This confused approach led to a confused organization, plagued by internal rivalries, bad decisions and constant turmoil. His one hope seemed to be what's been called the "meteor strategy." If Trump got hit by a meteor, then DeSantis would be the logical alternative.
But the opposite happened. Instead of getting blasted by an outside event, Trump got bolstered by several -- the four cases that charged him with 91 crimes. They became the ideal way for Trump to advance his core argument of grievance and victimhood, and even his rivals were compelled to defend him and deride the legal system.
"If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn't been indicted on any of this stuff," DeSantis told David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network News. "It's sucked out a lot of oxygen."
True. But a lot of DeSantis' wounds were self-inflicted. The governor is 45, and he will only be 50 on Election Day 2028, so he could well run again. But if he does, he has a lot to learn.
Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.
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