Hurricane Ron DeSantis If he can do the executive job, maybe his skill at small talk is immaterial.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ron-desantis-hurricane-idalia-florida-a4ec7f61?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
Ron DeSantis spent Thursday visiting rural Florida counties hit by Hurricane Idalia, and during his morning news update the Governor was in command of the details. “As of 6 a.m. today,” he said, “there are approximately 146,000 power outages reported across the state,” but thousands of borrowed linemen were at work, and 420,000 accounts had already been restored.
As of the night before, Mr. DeSantis said, authorities had done about 40 successful rescues. “All state bridges, including the Cedar Key Bridge, have been cleared, and that happened within 12 hours of landfall,” he added. Schools? “Thirty of the 52 districts that closed during the storm are open today, and an additional eight will be open tomorrow.” Fuel, water, tarps? “All that stuff we have an abundance of, and we’ll be providing that as needed.”
The driving winds in Florida’s Big Bend region were enough to rip off roofs and topple a gas-station canopy. Yet worse appears to have been avoided because Idalia hit mostly rural areas, after a forecast of its path that Mr. DeSantis called “pretty doggone accurate.” The contrast is with Hurricane Ian last year, which was predicted to hit the Big Bend but veered into Fort Myers and killed about 150 Americans.
Mr. DeSantis received high marks for his handling of that disaster, in particular after the state Transportation Department made swift emergency repairs to two bridges the storm damaged, stranding thousands of residents.
Hurricane Idalia cleanup isn’t over, and perhaps there will be hiccups. But if there aren’t, we’ll know it by what we don’t read in the national press. The Governor will get no credit for success.
This seems to be Mr. DeSantis in his element, examining the figures, the emergency response plans, the Covid-19 statistics, and then synthesizing it into government policy. Everyone knows an introvert like this, and the flip side of the personality type is that Mr. DeSantis, now a 2024 presidential candidate, has proved less than adept at making small talk with Iowans.
There’s a reason that at least some Republican voters have preferred to nominate governors, who have executive experience, over legislators, whose basic job description is to spend three hours orating followed by one minute voting. Using the bully pulpit effectively is important for a President, but so is dragging better policy out of a vast federal bureaucracy that views a Republican in the Oval Office as a temporary hostile occupying power.
A question to ponder is whether today’s soundbite-driven primaries are selecting for the qualities that Republicans, and Americans, really want in a President. This is one slice of the case for Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy, despite his recent struggles. His competitors might have a better 15-second retort to the 30-second drive-by at the debate. But could they get the bridge open?
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