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Is the world ready for President DeSantis and a Floridian foreign policy?
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| Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), with his wife Casey and their children, at an election night party in Tampa on Tuesday after winning his race for reelection. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) |
A disappointing night for most Republicans turned into a very good night for one Floridian. Gov. Ron DeSantis not only won a second term in Tuesday’s midterm elections but also did so by a sizable margin — even winning Miami-Dade County, marking the first time a Republican has taken that largely urban electorate in two decades.
The results cemented many expectations that DeSantis would run for president in 2024 — a situation that’s already sparking tension with another Floridian Republican, former president Donald Trump. And to some Democrats, the double-digit wins seen by not only DeSantis but Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday have firmly ended the chapter where the state could be seen as a swing state.
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The midterm vote was closely watched overseas, with European allies, in particular, breathing a sigh of relief that the more incendiary Trump-aligned Republicans had a relatively poor showing. In a statement reported by my colleagues, German politician Reinhard Bütikofer wrote approvingly that “the pessimistic assumption that Donald Trump would become U.S. president again in 2024 has become a bit more unrealistic.”
But the results on Tuesday opened up another possibility: President DeSantis. What would that mean for the world? In some ways, that may seem more palatable to many than Trump or another Trumpian alternative. But DeSantis would also be the United States’ first Florida-born president — and if the Democrats give up the Sunshine State to the Republicans, the wider impact on U.S. foreign policy could be significant.
Here are three things to consider:
DeSantis is not Trump. He may not always act like it, but DeSantis’s résumé is more of a run-of-the-mill Republican civil servant than the bombastic-businessman-turned-political-arsonist Trump.
In some ways, DeSantis’s background makes him look closer to former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, whose more interventionist leanings were sometimes at odds with Trump.
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Despite a relatively humble upbringing, DeSantis went from Jacksonville to Yale, before going on to Harvard Law School. He went on to work as a lawyer for the U.S. Navy, serving at the base in Guantánamo Bay and deploying to Iraq. When he returned, he served as a federal prosecutor before winning two terms in the House.
It’s a fairly typical career path for an American politician. Reflecting that, DeSantis has largely focused on domestic policy in the House and later as governor, but most of what he has said about foreign policy fits well within preexisting norms, rather than Trump’s often ad hoc style.
DeSantis has condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and was critical of President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan. He is also strongly opposed to traditional U.S. foes like Iran, notably opposing the nuclear deal with that country, as well as newer rivals like China, and has pledged to be “the most pro-Israel governor in America.”
He is, however, a Florida man. Unlike Trump, born wealthy in New York City and only belatedly becoming a resident, DeSantis is a real Florida man. And to some extent, he lives up to the reputation, notably paying extra attention to foreign issues close to many Floridians: Including Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Haiti.
He claims to not be a fan of rules and big government. The Florida governor first came to real national attention when he pushed a controversial laissez-faire approach to covid-19. That approach put DeSantis at odds with World Health Organization guidance, even if it wasn’t quite as combative as Trump’s move to pull the United States out of that body. (Most accounts of Florida’s time during the pandemic suggest DeSantis’s policies were neither the success he portrayed them as nor the disaster his critics feared).
Unlike Trump — who still has his reputation as a dealmaker at heart — DeSantis may be more rigid and less open to persuasion. Profiles have repeatedly suggested that he has little of the personal charm or interest in social functions that many politicians have. Any world leaders who would seek a bromance with this man may end up with a cold shoulder.
DeSantis is happy to use brash rhetoric and even cruel stunts to make his point. He has flown Venezeulean migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in a bid to own liberals and battled with Disney over gay rights — breaking with Republican orthodoxy to complain about corporate power. He has said France would fold if Russia invaded and sided with Elon Musk over Ukrainian leaders after the U.S. billionaire suggested Kyiv needed to negotiate a peace deal with Russia.
And while DeSantis appears to have accepted the reality of climate change’s likely impact on Florida, he has favored throwing money at climate adaptation rather than working to actually mitigate the problem.
As one critic recently put it, his plan has been “Hand out big contracts for patching up the impacts on pricey waterfront property while ignoring essentially everything, and everyone, else.” If the United States goes all in with that approach, it could impact everywhere in the world.
What happens if Democrats give up on Florida voters? If DeSantis is on the ballot in the presidential race in 2024, he is likely to carry the state — long considered a toss-up — easily. Democrats, already skeptical about their chances in the state, may consider it a lost cause.
That could have major implications. Many in Florida’s large Latino population have fled extreme or socialist regimes in places like Cuba and Venezuela, which has influenced the policies of both Republicans and Democrats vying for votes in the state.
But some believe Democrats have already begun to move on. Certainly, it looks like Biden’s foreign policy is far from beholden to Florida’s Latino voters. His administration has eased sanctions on Venezuela, loosened restrictions on Cuba and removed Colombian rebel group FARC from a list of foreign terrorist organizations.
On Tuesday, the same day that voting was underway in the United States, climate envoy John F. Kerry had a brief meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt. Though U.S. officials downplayed the interaction, it comes at an interesting time: The Biden administration has been easing sanctions related to Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, as energy prices rose amid the war in Ukraine and tensions with Saudi Arabia, the oil market giant, further roiled the market.