Never your time, never your turn: A cautionary tale for presidential hopefuls

After scoring arguably the biggest victory for Republicans in an otherwise poor 2022 election season, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has quickly solidified his place in the top ranks of 2024’s GOP presidential contenders. Polls were briefly showing him leading the field. But after a few months of attacks by Donald Trump, DeSantis’s not-yet-announced presidential run is already on shaky ground.

Recent polls show DeSantis plummeting, causing some election-watchers to question whether he should hold off on a run until 2028, when presumably Trump may be out of the picture. But the reality is that in politics — especially presidential politics — there is no waiting: It is never your time and it’s never your turn.

History is replete with examples of prominent elected officials waiting for the perfect time and finding that it never comes. Take New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s famous “Hamlet on the Hudson” routine, Douglas McArthur’s fruitless flirtations or Jeb Bush’s rueful acknowledgment that he should have run in 2012.

On the other hand, a “fortune favors the bold” approach has worked. Barack Obama received pushback for his presidential run after less than a term in the Senate. That didn’t stop voters from flocking to him and making him arguably the most successful Democratic presidential choice in over 40 years.

It may seem that at least avoiding a defeat could help a candidate in the future. But, perhaps surprisingly, losing a primary run is not usually a negative for future attempts.

Both parties have repeatedly rewarded candidates who tried and tried again. Republicans have particularly been willing to tap the silver medalist from the last presidential race. They used this exact strategy in five of six new candidate choices from 1980-2012, as Mitt Romney, John McCain, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had all been the second choice four years before getting the party nomination.

Democrats have historically been less interested in this approach, but that has changed in a big way in recent years: President Joe Biden lost two previous attempts before gaining the presidential nomination, and Hilary Clinton managed to come back from a primary loss to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2016.

DeSantis will have a further challenge if he waits until 2028. By then, unless he gains an appointment or wins a Senate or other seat, he will have been out of office due to term limits. While plenty of nominees have taken the nomination while out of office, historically most nominees are actively in another elected position when they win the selection process. There are some advantages to being out of power, including not being tied to a state, but it can still be a hurdle. No matter how much noise he makes, DeSantis may find that his spotlight is dimmed and donors, voters and the media are focused on a shiny new set of elected officials, including whomever the new governor of Florida is.

With his numbers falling and a target on his back, Ron DeSantis may find advisers pushing for a “discretion is the better part of valor” excuse that allows him to back out and come again for the nomination in 2028. But a look at past presidential runs shows that while GOP primary voters are unlikely to punish a failed run now, a real chance may not be on tap later.

Your turn and your time is not promised in politics. If DeSantis chooses to back out now, he may become just the latest contender to learn that lesson.

Joshua Spivak is the author of “Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.” He is a senior research fellow at Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center and a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College.