I am pleased to report that Governor Ron DeSantis is back. All the way back. He experienced a bump in the road, as you may have heard, three months ago in Iowa. It was the first bump in a smoothly ascending career.

DeSantis was raised in a working-class family in Dunedin, Fla., which is not to be confused with Palm Beach, Fla. He excelled at the local high school and was accepted by Yale at a time when Yale was still Yale. He excelled there, too, and was then accepted by the Harvard Law School when it was still Harvard Law School. Then his career slipped into an even higher gear. He was commissioned as a Navy officer, served a tour in Iraq, moved to Jacksonville, joined a top-shelf law firm, married a TV anchorwoman, and dove into a five-way primary for a new House seat just south of the city. He went to Congress in 2013 at the age of 34.

By 2018, DeSantis was in Tallahassee, as governor of what was then the most important swing state in the country. He won the gubernatorial election that year, it should be noted, not on the basis of a stellar congressional career, nor a chiliastic campaign platform, but because he was supported by Donald J. Trump, who was, then as now, the single most powerful Republican in the nation. DeSantis won by a whisker over an unknown and ethically challenged weirdo of no fixed sexual address.

DeSantis had something to prove, and he proved it. In his first term, he took charge of a fractious GOP, compiled a textbook record of conservative reform, and, in 2022, ran up an historic reelection margin of 19 points, carrying with him super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature. It was a personal triumph. Donald J. Trump played no role in that campaign, other than grumbling nocturnally on social media.

DeSantis then did what came naturally. He did the “next thing.” He raised money, laid the predicate for a national campaign, and declared for president. It was just about then that Hurricane Trump made landfall. Yes, Trump’s scalpel-wielding campaign aide, Susie Wiles, got all of us yammering about the governor’s height and his shoes and his smile and his supposedly bossy wife, but Trump proved to be an irresistible force. Even as indictments rained down on him, he choke-held 50 percent-plus of the GOP primary vote.

With his butt kicked red, DeSantis limped back to Tallahassee, somewhat older and a lot more . . . what? Distracted? Disgusted? Vengeful? Bored? Bone-tired? Nobody was quite sure. Which invited some GOP legislators, in the manner of fifth-grade wise guys sizing up a substitute teacher, to go into business for themselves. Undervetted policy ideas, each one battier than the last, began to gain traction.

And then a remarkable thing happened. Ron DeSantis stepped up. He deftly pulled power back to his own office, recommitted to his role as chief executive, and began to remind voters that he had been and could once again be a first-class governor. Polls this past weekend confirmed that DeSantis is now the most popular political figure in the state — more so than Senator Rick Scott now running for reelection, more so than Senator Marco Rubio, more so than Donald J. Trump.

Here’s a safe prediction: There will be a second act in national life for Ron and Casey DeSantis. They’re still more than 30 years younger than Donald J. Trump.

*Jose Marti, the Cuban nationalist and poet, once said that, to lead a full life, a man must have written a book, had a son, and planted a tree. That has always struck me as a low bar. My own view is that anybody who has written a book, or even read somebody else’s book appreciatively, should also have started a magazine. Magazines are little miracles, quaint villages of the likeminded conjured out of thin air for the enjoyment of local folk temporarily out of town. Every writer, every editor has a magazine gestating somewhere, and it is our Tocquevillian responsibility to do what we can to midwife their creation.

We need not tarry over my personal history. My beautiful little magazine, after only three issues, died suddenly of acute financial malnutrition. We built it but they didn’t come. I have atoned in recent years by offering copious advice and modest financial backing for numerous gleam-in-the-eye magazines. Some got stuck in the birth canal. Some made a brief appearance before flickering out. A few made it through the lift-off phase to enjoy a good run. (There are no permanent victories in magazine publishing. Remember the titans: Sports Illustrated, the New Republic, Readers Digest, and many, many others.)

One of those few is The Lamp, which describes itself as “a Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc.” It is that and it is more than that. It’s a clubhouse, or maybe a leather-couched den, for all of you who lament the loss of the high culture. It’s brilliantly edited by a committed Catholic, Matthew Walther, who frequently makes a place at his table for high-church Anglicans. They are reliably good houseguests: They talk well, drink moderately, and are theologically respectful to the host. Give The Lamp a try. It’s a helluva read.