NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O ne consistent line of criticism of Ron DeSantis, even from some nervous supporters, is that he is simply too introverted to be a successful presidential candidate and president. We’ve seen some version of this line over and over again. Whether in published stories or talking to people who have been on the Hill, we have all heard enough on-the-record quotes from people who have worked with DeSantis personally to be confident that this is not an entirely made-up narrative.
The consistent theme of those who make this argument is that DeSantis is not a natural people person. He is, by temperament, a loner, a guy who’d rather hang out at home with his family and who keeps himself inside a tight inner circle as a politician. It’s not that he can’t or won’t do retail politics: It’s easy to find video of him working a room of ordinary voters with grace and good humor. But he is not naturally charming, and schmoozing voters, donors, legislators, and the like often appears to be a chore for him. It takes something out of him, and he periodically needs to unplug and shut out the world, sometimes leaving him gruff and detached when dealing with his staff, and sometimes resulting in his blowing off donors who would normally be accustomed to the obsequious attentions of politicians. If I had to summarize his public demeanor in a word, it would be “prosecutorial.”
You could not invent a more stereotypical Beltway attitude than what Texas congressman Lance Gooden told Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker after Gooden and a number of Florida members of the House endorsed Donald Trump, who spent more time personally appealing to them than DeSantis did:
DeSantis left Congress as I was entering Congress, so I did not know him as a colleague. I spoke with some members who said he was a nice guy, but instead of going and having a beer after work he would go home and get on FaceTime with his wife and kids for an hour or two, which is admirable.
As a father myself, it is very difficult to be going back and forth across the country every week. A lot of times, I will call it a night early, have a quick bite, and then I’ll jump on the phone and talk to my kids while they’re doing their homework. I get that. I respect that. But every time I say no to a dinner invitation, or no to a social activity with a colleague, then I am turning down an opportunity to grow my list of allies.
Washington is very much a back-slapping, cigar-smoking, beer-drinking-type city. Because he did not do that, and because he was also in the Freedom Caucus, where they inevitably annoy some folks from time to time, I don’t know that he had those close relationships.
Perhaps DeSantis had been planning all along to go home to Florida and run for governor and was thus less invested in making friends in D.C., but this does suggest a type that doesn’t naturally gravitate toward the crowd. Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, and Ryan Lizza of Politico Playbook added this detail about how DeSantis lost the endorsement of Florida congressman Greg Steube:
The snub from GOP lawmakers in his home state is particularly striking, and it’s playing into the narrative that DeSantis is too aloof and inattentive to the interpersonal niceties of big-league politics.
Just ask Steube, who told Playbook in a brief interview last night that DeSantis has never once reached out to him during his five years in Congress nor replied to his multiple attempts to connect. He recalled a recent news conference dealing with damage from Hurricane Ian where the governor’s aides initially invited him to stand alongside DeSantis, only to tell him that he wouldn’t be part of the event when he showed up.
Trump, on the other hand, was the first person Steube remembers calling him in the ICU to wish him well after he was injured in a January tree-trimming accident. “To this day I have not heard from Gov. DeSantis,” he said.
The flip side of this personality trait is that DeSantis is also famous for his intensive focus and preparation. He is known for a nearly unparalleled capacity to consume briefing materials and do his own research. This aspect of his character was especially notable during the early months of the pandemic, when other politicians were relying on expert medical advice and DeSantis was coming to his own conclusions from plowing through scientific studies. We all have only so much bandwidth; the mental energy that DeSantis conserves in dealing with people leaves him more room to focus on information. In that sense, it is a trade-off.
The Carter-era saying that the modern presidency had become too big a job for one man is something of a canard, but it has always been the case that even the best presidents have both strengths and weaknesses. DeSantis will never excel at forging personal connections. Which raises the question: Is the presidency too social a job for a natural introvert? Is this particular skill one that a president cannot do without?
Certainly, politics tends to attract extroverts, the sorts of people who start running for office as soon as they’re old enough to be class president, who remember the names of everyone they meet, who never tire of crowds and in some cases feel adrift without them, who have the capacity to make everyone they meet feel like the most important person in the room. Presidential campaigns require many months of trudging through small states such as Iowa and New Hampshire and engaging in a lot of retail politics with small crowds; presidencies require a lot of arm-twisting of legislators.
The job tends to reward people who have that bottomless hunger for human interaction. Democratic politics in particular has tended to produce a lot of politicians who were masters at working a room. Bill Clinton was the most extroverted person I have ever seen, a man so extroverted he could barely remain clothed, so seductive that even bitter enemies such as Newt Gingrich testified to being charmed by him up close. Joe Biden was once an extreme extrovert, and so were Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson (a man notorious for invading the personal space of others). Democrats of an earlier age, such as Franklin Pierce and Martin Van Buren, were like this, too. Pierce could barely sit still alone at his desk and did most of his work meeting with his cabinet or walking around dropping in on people. Some modern Republican leaders have been decidedly people-person types, such as Donald Trump and George W. Bush. John McCain, who won the nomination in 2008, loved the small-group give and take despite his often-crusty personality.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have had introverts in the job before. The two most extreme examples go back to well before the age of mass media and personal campaigning: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both men happier alone in their libraries than in a crowd. Jefferson’s distaste for public speaking is why the State of the Union stopped being a speech for over a century starting with his presidency. James K. Polk had the dry personality of a poker player who never let his cards show. Ulysses S. Grant was reserved, self-contained, phlegmatic, and something of a loner; the famous story of his brief conversation with Sherman at Shiloh opens with Sherman finding him chomping a cigar alone with his thoughts in the rain. Calvin Coolidge was famously a shy man of few words who enjoyed fishing alone. All enjoyed extensive political success.
Probably the most naturally introverted modern president was Richard Nixon, who nonetheless won two national elections, narrowly lost a third, and was on two other winning national tickets. There’s a famous photo of Nixon shaking hands while literally looking down at his watch. Nixon’s other flaws of character and personality were what doomed him, but while his awkwardness with people was a liability, it did not stop him from navigating the complex factional politics of the Republican Party between 1948 and 1973 or from ascending to the heights of 1972, when he carried 49 states and hammered out a personal rapprochement with Mao Zedong.
Even presidents who were known for their charisma were not necessarily extroverted types. Both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama were happier in the spotlight on stage than they were in small groups. Although Reagan did have the gift of putting people at ease, he had few close friends besides his wife, and people who considered themselves longtime friends often commented on how unknowable he was beneath the surface. Obama plainly did not enjoy glad-handing and also preferred time with his family. George Washington, while he enjoyed social company, was legendarily aloof and forbidding, as if one had invited a marble statue to a cocktail party. Washington’s obsessive concern for his dignity concealed a good deal of personal insecurity about his education and social graces. By contrast, while Abraham Lincoln was moody, shy with women, and prone to long periods of isolation, he was also a gifted raconteur who could hold forth at any length in a roomful of men.
In the age of mass social media and vast campaign-advertising budgets, it is debatable how much retail politics in the early states actually matters. Biden, Trump, and Obama didn’t get to be president by personally charming people in a gym in Davenport, Iowa, or a diner in Manchester, N.H. Biden, in fact, suffered some very public losses of temper with individual voters and did so terribly in the first two states that they’ve been moved down the Democratic calendar this time around. Trump won the nomination much more on the strength of national cable-television coverage of his vast rallies than because he was good at shaking hands.
As for being able to do the job, there is nothing in the record DeSantis has compiled in Florida to suggest that he has had difficulty keeping the state legislature in line. If anything, he rules his state party with an iron rod, bending the legislature to his will when they disagree, as happened with Florida’s redistricting. (A recent exception would be his proposal to make it easier to sue the media for defamation, which collapsed after the Fox–Dominion settlement.) His intellect, discipline, focus, and preparation have mattered more than a shortage of backslapping.
We have primaries in large part to road-test the relative strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. No candidate is without some of the latter, least of all Donald Trump. If DeSantis wins the White House, it might be because he has put in the work to minimize his shortcomings, but it will more likely be because his strengths and his opponents’ weaknesses outweighed them.