Ron DeSantis Is a Man of Action, Not Just Words By Jeffrey Blehar
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ron-desantis-is-a-man-of-action-not-just-words/
Most politicians blather and bloviate; that style tends to work electorally. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is notably — and problematically for his national prospects — not one of them. He doesn’t do stand-up-comedian-style rallies or engage with ease in light banter. He doesn’t get up on a debate stage and start spouting half-considered college-dorm political theories. Instead, Ron DeSantis thinks and acts, and in his actions proves why people longing for executive competence in the White House continue to look to him as a better leader for the Republican Party than Donald Trump.
Aside from all the other madness that ensued after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of Americans were left stranded in Israel, their flights canceled under wartime conditions. On Thursday, DeSantis signed an executive order authorizing the state of Florida, under its emergency-management laws, to extract as many Floridians as possible. His enemies soon dismissed “DeSantis Air” as little better than a crass publicity stunt. Ex-GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, always eager for that next cable-news booking, haughtily mocked him, sounding like a Saruman-possessed King Theoden: “You have no power here!”
I hope DeSantis — like Gandalf in the The Two Towers — has released Kinzinger from his nihilistic delusions, because it turns out that a man with a plan and an idea of what can be achieved can get real things done. Last night, “DeSantis Air” landed in Tampa with 270 Americans aboard. All of them are grateful to be here, and they have the governor and his team to thank for the logistical work in getting them back without the State Department charging them thousands of dollars for the privilege. Those are concrete results, as measured in the real lives of American citizens. The guy gets things done.
What has depressingly gotten lost in the miasma of this ridiculous 2024 presidential campaign is that this is basically all Ron DeSantis does, all the time. DeSantis’s gubernatorial record has been covered in great detail here at National Review — his Covid and educational records are two highlights, and his natural-disaster management has been sterling as well — but simply consider what he has done since Hamas’s attack on Israel, balancing both the campaign trail with his duties as governor, to appreciate his abilities as an executive in charge of his brief. With the same executive order he used to authorize the above airlift, DeSantis also immediately ordered Florida state troopers to bolster security for Jewish schools and synagogues. Are you worried about the rising tide of antisemitism in academia across the country, as you very much should be? Not long ago, DeSantis appointed former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse the head of the University of Florida, and Sasse has fully justified his confidence, with a response to the Hamas atrocities that was the single most dignified public statement from a major university in the entire nation.
And DeSantis exhibits full command over the complexities of the situation as well. Last Tuesday, he appeared on Morning Joe and talked about Israel’s history of military conflicts, and the nature of Iranian involvement, with the ease and fluidity of a man who not only went to an Ivy League law school but also spent time with Navy JAG in Fallujah. He (quite presciently) drilled in on one point in particular: “I fear what happens in these situation is, yeah, people say ‘Israel can respond,’ then a week later, then two weeks later, then people start to blame Israel. There’s no moral equivalence between a Hamas terrorist and an Israeli civilian, and they have every right to see this through to the hilt.” This weekend, when asked on Face the Nation the rather fanciful question of whether the United States should accept Gazan refugees from the impending Israeli offensive, he had the temerity not only to say no but also to point out the awkward truth: The people of Gaza, and not just Hamas itself, have been born and raised with Muslim Brotherhood propaganda to be eliminationist antisemites as well as revolutionaries, and there’s a reason neither Egypt nor Jordan will have anything to do with harboring them, much less the United States.
In an election season where Trump has blotted out the sun and coverage of the presidential race has often been reduced to a surly lament of “are we really going to do this twice?,” I have been critical of Ron DeSantis’s campaign, at times perhaps out of frustration. In the midst of a week of international crisis, however, he has reminded Floridians, and Republicans nationally, of the qualities that have made him such a superb governor and that should make him an appealing candidate for president. The best advertisement for such a candidate (and also one of the best criteria on which to judge them) is the evidence of how they respond in a crisis. Over the past week, Ron DeSantis has not set a foot wrong.
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