In all the coronation hoo-hah, it was easy to overlook another significant political event: the visit to the UK of Republican presidential hopeful, Ron DeSantis.
And what do you know, he’s good.
Good enough for a meaningful full length interview. Unlike so many these days.
Sitting down with the Daily Telegraph, he made a spot-on demotic summary of a global trade policy based on multilateral harmonisation:
“In America, the days of these massive trade deals with all these different countries, those days are probably over; there’s a lot of stuff that gets thrown into that”.
Roughly two haiku in length but more to the point than years of obfuscatory FTA verbiage.
Adding some policy judgement:
“The trading is going to be based on bilateral agreements … There is a much better chance that there could be something that is mutually beneficial between the UK and the US, rather than doing something with the entire EU or the entire Pacific.”
And then something rather reassuring:
“It is possible. I would have to see the details.”
You can take the boy out of policy but …
He also demonstrated a strategic clarity sadly lacking in today’s centre-right. For example, on the failure to deal systematically with woke infiltration:
“On the right, for a long time, it was basically let’s keep government in its place and everything else will work out … We always just assumed that all these other institutions in society were healthy, whether that’s corporate America, academia or all these other things. Now there is just more of a realisation that you can win an election, and we won an election big in Florida, and yet the Left can still impose its agenda through these other arteries of society, and that’s a problem. I think there’s a better recognition of the need to fight across the board.”
A little research and a few moments of reflection ought to convince most folk on the centre-right that in policy terms DeSantis has a fair chance (and very likely the best one) of delivering an early Republican majority and a systematic break with the current economic and political orthodoxy.
And yet his presidential hopes seem to be sagging, as Florida’s congressional Republicans rush to endorse Donald Trump.
To be fair, Trump is consistently under-rated. It shouldn’t be too long before more economists – and even dare one say it – historians will be admitting through gritted teeth that his administration’s policy record compares favourably with that of Joe Biden.
But we all know that elections don’t turn on policy studies. Nor does Donald Trump’s popularity (and unpopularity). Those rest on his personification of an emotional rejection of the current orthodoxy.
Whereas DeSantis has shown willing to define it rigorously, and oppose it systematically. And get re-elected.
It may be instructive to cast an eye back to the similarly-confused politics of the 1970s. Few commentators were prepared to back Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan beforehand as deliverers of fundamental change. At no time did their length of tenure – nor the outcomes achieved – seem inevitable as they seem now.
But their commitment to underlying principles, and – crucially – the fit of those principles to the needs of the time, did the job.
Looking at the low-growth, expensive-energy, expert-dictated society envisaged by today’s centrist politicians, an optimist might hope it is as doomed to disappoint as the 1970s corporatist consensus.
Both Trump and DeSantis have tackled it.
Trump obstructed with great success in his term, but he did not embed a consistent turning of the intellectual tide.
And if that is what is needed, DeSantis looks the better bet.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
“In America, the days of these massive trade deals with all these different countries, those days are probably over; there’s a lot of stuff that gets thrown into that”.
Roughly two haiku in length but more to the point than years of obfuscatory FTA verbiage.
Adding some policy judgement:
“The trading is going to be based on bilateral agreements … There is a much better chance that there could be something that is mutually beneficial between the UK and the US, rather than doing something with the entire EU or the entire Pacific.”
And then something rather reassuring:
“It is possible. I would have to see the details.”
You can take the boy out of policy but …
He also demonstrated a strategic clarity sadly lacking in today’s centre-right. For example, on the failure to deal systematically with woke infiltration:
“On the right, for a long time, it was basically let’s keep government in its place and everything else will work out … We always just assumed that all these other institutions in society were healthy, whether that’s corporate America, academia or all these other things. Now there is just more of a realisation that you can win an election, and we won an election big in Florida, and yet the Left can still impose its agenda through these other arteries of society, and that’s a problem. I think there’s a better recognition of the need to fight across the board.”
A little research and a few moments of reflection ought to convince most folk on the centre-right that in policy terms DeSantis has a fair chance (and very likely the best one) of delivering an early Republican majority and a systematic break with the current economic and political orthodoxy.
And yet his presidential hopes seem to be sagging, as Florida’s congressional Republicans rush to endorse Donald Trump.
To be fair, Trump is consistently under-rated. It shouldn’t be too long before more economists – and even dare one say it – historians will be admitting through gritted teeth that his administration’s policy record compares favourably with that of Joe Biden.
But we all know that elections don’t turn on policy studies. Nor does Donald Trump’s popularity (and unpopularity). Those rest on his personification of an emotional rejection of the current orthodoxy.
Whereas DeSantis has shown willing to define it rigorously, and oppose it systematically. And get re-elected.
It may be instructive to cast an eye back to the similarly-confused politics of the 1970s. Few commentators were prepared to back Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan beforehand as deliverers of fundamental change. At no time did their length of tenure – nor the outcomes achieved – seem inevitable as they seem now.
But their commitment to underlying principles, and – crucially – the fit of those principles to the needs of the time, did the job.
Looking at the low-growth, expensive-energy, expert-dictated society envisaged by today’s centrist politicians, an optimist might hope it is as doomed to disappoint as the 1970s corporatist consensus.
Both Trump and DeSantis have tackled it.
Trump obstructed with great success in his term, but he did not embed a consistent turning of the intellectual tide.
And if that is what is needed, DeSantis looks the better bet.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
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