A bog-standard winter day
Dear Francis,
The first contest of the 2024 presidential contest happens this Monday, in Iowa, and the baltic weather should keep things at least somewhat interesting. If Monday were nothing more than a bog-standard winter day, the only people tuning in would be politicos and reporters with nothing better to do. The outcome of Iowa's Republican caucus is, almost, foreordained. Maybe a particularly gelid day can throw History off?
Doubtful, in my opinion.
As I am writing this letter, I am looking at RealClearPolitics' polling averages in Iowa, and Trump sits comfortably at a seemingly unassailable 53%. Haley, huffing and puffing at 17.5%, is running several miles behind "The Big Guy." Competitive this is not.
DeSantis, whose presidential campaign seemed, last year, poised to give Trump a run for his money, is running with Haley's shadow, at 15.5%.
Trump's victory in Iowa, and the rest of the states, seems inevitable, a product of historical forces more than individual choices.
But lest you take me too seriously, Francis, I hasten to add that I do not, in fact, believe in historical determinism or anything like it. Ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver once wrote, but even then, you need individuals to pluck such abstractions off the branches and put them into action.
Enough philosophizing, though.
The New York Times' Ross Douthat has a column today in which he explores why Republican voters are, on the cusp of Iowa, once again coalescing around Trump, even though DeSantis, with his gubernatorial successes, milder deportment, and less shambolic governing style, is an arguably stronger candidate.
Douthat writes:
If Republicans wanted to keep key elements of Trumpism but joined to greater competence, if they wanted a president who would promise to build a wall and then actually complete it, DeSantis was clearly the best and only possibility.
The conclusion Douthat comes to, Francis, is not a new one. He writes:
But it doesn’t feel at all surprising that, instead, voters seem ready to break decisively for Trump. The prosecutions created an irresistible drama, a theatrical landscape of persecution rather than a quotidian competition between policy positions, a gripping narrative to join rather than a mere list of promises to back. And irresistible theater, not a more effective but lower-drama alternative, appears to be the revealed preference of the Republican coalition, the thing its voters really want.
New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait identified the Republican Party's verklempt tendencies in the halcyon days of 2015, when Trump's candidacy still seemed baffling and outré but increasingly imaginable.
Chait wrote:
Trump embodies that mysterious X factor that has eluded analysts of all sides. His affect supplies his appeal — he is strong, mad, and, above all, unapologetic in a world that demands he apologize. Trump is not the spokesman for an idea at all, but the representation of undifferentiated resentment.
This, I think, Francis, best captures the irritable mental gestures—to borrow an apt turn of phrase from Mr. Trilling—impelling the Republican Party forward.
Politics has always been a marriage of emotion and reason, the exact proportions of which vary with each individual. Movements, being composed of individuals, are the same way. In some cases, ideas animate movements, while in other cases, it is something closer to, say, ressentiment.
The Republican Party is decidedly and emphatically and categorically emotion-driven these days (or "vibes-based," as the children say). The Party, in fact, has not released a platform since 2016, a rather on-the-nose dereliction attesting to its intellectual stagnation.
In 2016, Jeb Bush offered Republicans a wonky alternative to Trump, the promise of a presidency constructed on white papers and policy briefs. Republicans showed no interest in Bush's cerebral hustings, forcing him, in one memorable and ignominious episode, to beseech his audience for an applause, like some hapless peasant debasing himself before Kuzco. DeSantis is more Bush than Trump, in spite of his penchant for culture war mêlées. He's more comfortable discussing the minutiae of tax policy than firing up a crowd. No producer will ever tap him to helm a reality television show—or any television show of which to speak.
Nothing has changed in the GOP since 2016. The undifferentiated resentment remains, still as undifferentiated as ever. If conservative voters unexpectedly break for Haley in the next few months, it will be because she has found a way to create her own irresistible theater.
With love,
SEW