Republicans Still Prefer Drama Over Competence

In a simpler time, say a decade or two ago, the charisma-deficient leader of a large state tied for the nation’s highest credit rating, praised for his decisive response to a major hurricane and boasting lower-than-average unemployment and higher-than-average student test scores, could have staked his claim to the presidency on executive competence.

Not Ron DeSantis, and most definitely not in 2024.

In his presidential announcement, Florida’s Republican governor spent more time discussing his battles against “gender ideology,” the “woke mob” and Disney than touting his stewardship of the third-most-populous state. More recently, DeSantis doubled down on culture wars in a campaign video — featuring muscle-bound actors and an image of the governor with lasers shooting out of his eyes — highlighting DeSantis’ positions against drag queens and gender-reassignment surgery. The ad is especially jarring in light of DeSantis’s statement during his campaign announcement that “Government is not about entertainment.”

This was, of course, meant as a dig against Donald Trump, who brought reality TV drama to the White House, while presiding over a modest list of accomplishments. Even many of the former president’s supporters concede his shambolic management style, most recently brought to light by his (at best) haphazard handling of classified documents while leaving office.

And yet, such is Trump’s influence that he almost single-handedly downgraded executive competence on the list of qualities for presidential candidates, including his opponents. It’s a turnabout from 2016, when many voters looked at Trump’s career in business — despite presiding over casino bankruptcies and real-estate writedowns — as evidence of executive acumen sorely missing in Washington. Trump’s comeback bid is fueled more by grievance than by claims of being a steady hand.

The “Deep State,” after all, is something to be vanquished, not managed.

It’s easy to forget that, not long ago, the Republican Party stood for C-suite sensibilities in the Oval Office, even if it sometimes fell short. George W. Bush was the first (and, so far, only) president with an MBA. Mitt Romney, also an MBA, brought decades of business leadership to his 2012 campaign to unseat President Barack Obama.

While Republicans have more aggressively embraced entertainment and populism over the more prosaic aspects of governing, Democrats aren’t immune to the lure of the bright lights. Low-charisma moderates with attractive business and government resumes, such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, disappeared without a trace in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Whatever his credentials as a former vice president, Joe Biden is rarely described as a technocrat or a policy wonk.

It’s difficult to tell whether technocrats make better presidents — simply because most of them lose. The candidates that have styled themselves as pragmatic managers — Romney in 2012, former Vice President Al Gore in 2000, and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988 — never made it to the Oval Office. Dukakis may be remembered best for his bumbling campaign, in which he declared: “This election is not about ideology. It’s about competence.” In that election, however, competence-minded voters had another good option in George H.W. Bush, with his federal pedigree including eight years as vice president. 

Based on early signs, next year’s election will have little to do with ideology, even less to do with competence, and a whole lot to do with personality.

That’s why DeSantis has been posing as a media-brawling warplane pilot and a heaven-sent fighter — and why Trump is, well, still Trump.

The Republican field includes a successful governor who founded a billion-dollar software company, a former governor who won praise for her tenure as United Nations ambassador, and a Yale Law School graduate who took a biotechnology company public before turning 30. Of the three, only Vivek Ramaswamy has attracted meaningful support — and not for his managerial chops, but for his preternaturally poised takedowns of “woke” ideology.

Candidates are nothing if not attuned to the mood of their voters, and today, competence ranks near the middle of what voters say they want. In a 2022 Ipsos poll, Democratic voters ranked “is focused on bringing the country together and finding compromise” as their top attribute, while Republicans cited “stands up for the freedom and dignity of all Americans.”

Still, it may be premature to write the obituary for competence. The United Kingdom offers a hopeful example. Its 2016 Brexit vote anticipated the sentiments that carried Trump into office, and the brash, wild-haired Prime Minister Boris Johnson embodied the populist surge that swept technocrats out to sea. Today, Great Britain is led by the bookish MBA Rishi Sunak, who successfully campaigned for the office on his “track record of delivery” and “clear plan to fix the biggest problems we face.” Across the ocean, Ron DeSantis may not have paid notice. But he should.

James Nash is senior vice president at the bipartisan public affairs consulting firm ROKK Solutions and former press secretary for the National Governors Association.