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Desantis would be bringing over a seasoned and loyal team from his Tenure as Florida governor, and a knowledge of how to use the powers of an executive office in a precise manner intended to bring about specific results in short order.
A huge part of Trump's issue was finding people both willing to serve on his staff and would be loyal enough to carry out his wishes in a competent manner. I expect this would hurt him in a second term.
Part of Desantis mythos is based on the fact that prior to taking office he did a long read into the entire 'rulebook' of what authority he actually possesses as Florida Governor and then, day one, flexing certain powers that had been long unused by the Governor to immediately establish himself as the new boss, and get doubters in line. Then he proceeded to strategically use those same powers in a judicious manner whenever it was needed.
Presumably he'd bring the same tactics to the Presidency.
Now, in Florida he had the benefit of full GOP control of the legislative branch to back up any decision he made. So unless that also applies to the 2024 election then those same assumptions might not carry over. And of course the Federal Congress is a different animal altogether.
Suffice it to say, Desantis at least recognizes the nature of the threat and the size of the task and is capable of both creating and carrying out a plan to deal with it with the assistance of other competent staff who aren't going to turn on him the very instant they leave the administration.
Except my point is that, whatever it says on paper, the U.S. Presidency doesn't actually have such powers. That the 2-million-plus Executive bureaucracy can defy any supposed authority a GOP president would attempt to assert, and there's nothing he could do about it.
And again, my point is that they won't work.
Except, what happens when the agencies refuse to let that "competent staff" in, refuse to accept their authority, refuse to follow their orders, and so on?
There is simply no way to force the vast permanent bureaucracy to obey anything it doesn't want to obey… because all the mechanisms for enforcement are part of that very same bureaucracy.
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I'd just like to take a moment here to plug the most important part of my view on Trump, which comes from Andrew Sullivan's interview of the author Michael Wolff. I won't drop too many spoilers, but Wolff, for all his factual errors, seems very correct to me when he talks about the language most journalists use being inadequate to describe Donald J. Trump.
Here is the interview: https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewsullivan/p/michael-wolff-on-the-trump-threat
also Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-wolff-on-the-trump-threat/id1536984072?i=1000534947059
and PodBay: https://podbay.fm/p/the-dishcast/e/1631290292
and how do I format links using markdown? Also, I'm just starting the book it's based on and I'll write it up a little as a top-level post when I'm done.
To do a hyperlink in markdown format use [link text](url)
Edit: and remember to use the escape character " \ " so you don't just make a bad link ;)
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