Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is to President Trump what President Reagan was to President Nixon. And of course, President Biden is the “second coming” of President Carter.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
Both Reagan and Nixon were California Republicans, although Nixon spent a lot of his career at a white-shoe law firm out of New York. Both DeSantis and Trump are now from Florida, although Trump could have used more help from white-shoe law firms out of New York.
Both Biden and Carter campaigned as centrists who could bring calm to a toxic national political environment but then made the situation immeasurably worse through bad management and even worse ideas.
Of course, like any historical comparisons, these comparisons are not perfect.
Nixon was a foreign policy genius who opened up China to Western investment, negotiated detente with the Soviet Union and promised to get us out of Vietnam. Trump was no foreign policy genius, but he did tell the Chinese that the gravy train was over, kept Russia out of Ukraine and promised to get us out of foreign wars. So maybe he was a kind of genius after all.
Carter’s mishandling of the Iran hostage crisis made America look weak and hurt perceptions of his presidency. Biden’s mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal made America look weak, emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and started his long, painful slide down the polls.
DeSantis is not the actor Reagan was, but his constant appearances on Fox News gave him in a leg up in his 2018 primary for governor, and he has a gift for understanding the dramatic messaging moment for Republicans.
The media hated Nixon with a passion, despite the fact that he was a policy centrist who enacted many controversial domestic policies, such as wage and price controls. The media, of course, continues to hate Trump, despite how good he is for their ratings. Indeed, they can’t stop talking about him.
Carter was famous for the misery index and stagflation. The misery index is what you get when you add high interest rates with high inflation. America forgot about the misery index until Biden came into office, and now it is coming to a street corner near you.
Both DeSantis and Reagan came from humble beginnings and used sports to get to the next rung on society’s ladder. DeSantis parlayed baseball into an athletic scholarship at Yale. Reagan played football at Eureka College and then became a radio sports announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox before becoming a movie star. DeSantis then went into the military as a JAG officer. Reagan starred in a couple of war movies during World War II.
Both Carter and Biden mishandled energy policy, misunderstood the value that fossil fuels play in our energy portfolio and had a misplaced belief in the value of alternative energy sources. As a result, the American people suffered and are suffering because of crippling high gas prices. The result for both: catastrophically low poll numbers.
Reagan promised to make America great again after the mess that Nixon and especially Carter made of the country. DeSantis is the best bet to clean up the terrible mess made by Biden and clear the decks from the division that came from the Trump years.
I liked Trump and his policies. But I am not sure whether America could handle his second act.
Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).