The choice between Florida Man Gaetz or Florida Man DeSantis
Hugo Gurdon
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Florida Man has acquired a reputation for comedic recklessness for which there is only a tortuous explanation but no reasonable excuse. These produce headlines such as “Florida man threw live alligator in Wendy’s drive-thru window” and “Florida man tries to evade arrest by cartwheeling away from cops.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the apotheosis of Florida Man on Capitol Hill, has just thrown an alligator onto the floor of the House of Representatives.
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His successful rebellion to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speaker’s chair, in which he was joined by seven other GOP Jacobins, was a grotesque but characteristic act of political vandalism. It drew massive media attention to its narcissistic leading protagonist at great cost to everyone else and to the institutions it touches. It is thus a textbook version of the modus operandi and motivation of Gaetz’s role model, former President Donald Trump, another and similar Florida Man.
Both create chaos partly, it seems, because they derive a simple and irresponsible pleasure from smashing norms, and partly because they see electoral advantage in doing so. Like his mentor, Gaetz appears to believe all publicity is good publicity, and he hopes it might help him win the governorship of his home state when it becomes vacant in 2026 or sooner.
The overthrow of McCarthy and the ensuing haggling over institutional powers are likely to make the House more, rather than less, dysfunctional. It will supplement the power of the radical opposition party whom the rebels claim to resist. And it will make a Democratic takeover of the majority more likely in the 2024 election because it will persuade more voters that Republicans are neither willing nor able to do the job. In short, it was quite a day’s work.
The mutiny threw overboard a speaker who had run the House in a more transparent and democratic way than any of his recent predecessors, and who had kept rather than broken his undertakings to the malcontents when (for 15 rounds of voting) they resisted giving him the gavel. It was, moreover, done without any apparent plan for how things will now proceed or further the conservative and fiscally responsible goals the rebels say are theirs.
The funding legislation with which McCarthy averted a damaging government shutdown had to exclude spending cuts to get Democratic support, so Gaetz and his ilk facilitated passage of a less conservative bill than could have been secured. Justifications from the tiny rank of Republican rebels that spending is too high (true) and “enough is enough” (also true) are facile excuses. They achieve nothing — at least nothing good.
The amused disdain contained in the phrase “Florida Man” curdles into bitterness with Gaetz, but the state doesn’t deserve such blinkered mockery. It is one of the most successful and best governed in the union, and it is on the strength of his record of achievement that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is running for his party’s presidential nomination. That, ironically, allows Gaetz to wonder whether the governor’s mansion will become free as early as 2025.
DeSantis won a landslide victory margin of nearly 20 points in the 2022 election not because he was good at throwing live gators where they don’t belong, or by rushing in where angels fear to tread, but because he governed well.
He made smart, evidence-based decisions favoring freedom, releasing Florida from COVID-19 lockdown restrictions sooner than most others. The state’s population is growing faster than any other because so many people want to get away from the fiscal sinkhole states run by Democrats. Florida’s economy is the third fastest-growing in America. It is the state that has been most courageous and principled in rolling back the tide of ideological indoctrination in schools on race and sex.
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So there are Florida men such as Gaetz, for whom chaos and the hobbling of action in Washington seem not to be a means to an end but goals in themselves. And there are Florida men such as DeSantis, who offer effective government at the state level and then seek to scale it up nationally.
It would be better to run the nation like Florida, and better not to run our federal government like a fast-food outlet with an alligator in the kitchen.