The Denver Post

Preaching freedom, Desantis leads by cracking down

- By Jennifer Szalai

As governor of Florida, Ron Desantis has been casting himself as a Donald Trump- like pugilist. But the overall sense you get from reading his new memoir is that of the mechanical try- hard — someone who has expended a lot of effort studying which way the wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is learning how to comport himself accordingl­y.

Not that he admits any of this, peppering “The Courage to Be Free” with frequent eruptions about “the legacy media” and “runaway wokeness.” But all the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core. A former military prosecutor, Desantis is undeniably diligent and discipline­d. “The Courage to Be Free” resounds with evidence of his “hard work” ( a favorite mantra), showing him poring over Florida’s laws and constituti­on in order to understand “the various pressure points in the system” and “how to leverage my authority to advance our agenda through that system.” Even the title, with its awkward feint at boldness while clinging to the safety of cliche, suggests the anxiety of an ambitious politician who really, really wants to run for president in 2024 and knows he needs the grievance vote, but is also trying his best to tiptoe around the Trump dragon.

What a difference a dozen years make. Back in 2011, a year before DeSantis first ran for Congress, he published “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers” — an obvious dig at Barack Obama, whom Desantis lambasted for his “thin resume” and “egotism” and “immense self- regard.” It was a curious book, full of high- toned musings about “the Framers’ wisdom” and “the Madisonian- designed political apparatus.”

His new book will leave some supporters, who have encouraged Desantis to “humanize himself” for a national audience, sorely disappoint­ed. In his acknowledg­ments, he thanks “a hardworkin­g team of literary profession­als who were critical to telling the Florida story,” but presumably those profession­als could only do so much with the material they were given. For the most part, “The Courage to Be Free” is courageous­ly free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernibl­e sense of humor. While his first book was weird and esoteric enough to have obviously been written by a human, this one reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by CHATGPT.

Desantis’ attempts at soaring rhetoric are mostly too leaden to get off the ground. “During times of turmoil,” he intones, “people want leaders who are willing to speak the truth, stand for what is right and demonstrat­e the courage necessary to lead.” Of his childhood baseball team making the Little League World Series, he says: “What I came to understand about the experience was less about baseball than it was about life. It was proof that hard work can pay off, and that achieving big goals was possible.” You have to imagine that Desantis, a doublebarr­eled Ivy Leaguer ( Yale University and Harvard Law School), put a bit more verve into his admissions essays. At around 250 pages, this isn’t a particular­ly long book, but it’s padded with such banalities.

Much of it is given over to laying out what he calls “Florida’s blueprint for America’s revival,” or, as he puts it in his generic summary: “Be willing to lead, have the courage of your conviction­s, deliver for your constituen­ts and reap the political rewards.” What this has meant in practice looks an awful lot like thought policing: outlawing classroom discussion of sexual orientatio­n through the third grade; rejecting math textbooks that run afoul of Florida’s opaque review process; forbidding teachers and companies to discuss race and gender in a way that might make anyone feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychologi­cal distress.” Florida also has a ban on abortion after 15 weeks — which DeSantis has indicated he would be willing to tighten to six weeks — with no exceptions for rape or incest.

In this regard, all the bland platitudes do serve a purpose. Desantis’ bluntforce wielding of executive power might sound like a good time for hard- core social conservati­ves, but if part of the point of this book is to float a trial balloon for a presidenti­al run, you can see the gears turning as he tries to make his message palatable for the national stage. Take out the gauzy abstractio­n, the heartwarmi­ng cliches, and much of what Desantis is describing in “The Courage to Be Free” is chilling — unfree and scary.

Of course, Desantis insists that he’s simply doing his bit to fight “political factionali­sm” and “indoctrina­tion.” He removed Tampa’s democratic­ally elected prosecutor from office in large part for pledging not to prosecute abortion providers — explaining in the book that he, Desantis, was just using the powers vested in him by Florida’s state constituti­on to suspend a “Soros- backed attorney” for “a clear case of incompeten­ce and neglect of duty.” ( Last month, a federal judge ruled that Desantis was in violation of state law.) Desantis boasts about big- footing companies and local municipali­ties when he prohibited vaccine mandates and lifted lockdowns. In April 2020, when the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championsh­ip expressed annoyance at the possibilit­y of dealing with some “jackass mayor,” Desantis told him not to worry: “I will overrule any mayor that gives you guys a hard time.”

It’s unclear what happened to the Desantis of a decade ago, a boilerplat­e libertaria­n and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who was mainly preoccupie­d with fiscal austerity and privatizin­g Medicare and Social Security. His 2011 book contained numerous tributes to “limited government.” Now, he says, in his typically windy way, anything he does that looks suspicious­ly intrusive is in fact a cleansing measure, purging public life of excess politiciza­tion: “For years, the default conservati­ve posture has been to limit government and then get out of the way. There is, no doubt, much to recommend to this posture — when the institutio­ns in society are healthy. But we have seen institutio­n after institutio­n become thoroughly politicize­d.”

Fewer than 20 pages later, Desantis proposes making about 50,000 federal employees — currently apolitical civil servants — into “at- will employees who serve at the pleasure of the president.” By any measure, this would amount to politiciza­tion on steroids.

But despite all the dutiful servings of red meat, Desantis looks so far to be the favored son of the donor class — which is probably the main audience for this book. The message to them seems to be twofold. First, don’t normalize “the woke impulse”: When Disney’s CEO criticized Florida’s so- called Don’t Say Gay law ( officially titled “Parental Rights in Education”), Desantis cracked down accordingl­y. Second, Republican donors can take assurance from “the Sunshine State’s favorable economic climate” that, when it comes to what truly matters to them, it will be business as usual.

Reading books, even bad ones, can be a goad to thinking, but what DeSantis seems to be doing in “The Courage to Be Free” is to insist that Americans should just stop worrying and let him do all the thinking for them. Any criticism of his policies is dismissed as “woke” nonsense cooked up by the “corporate media.” ( Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. and News Corp, which owns the publisher of this book, doubtless don’t count.) “I could withstand seven years of indoctrina­tion in the Ivy League,” Desantis says, only half in jest.

The bullying sense of superiorit­y is unmistakab­le, even when he tries to gussy it up in a mantle of freedom. Desantis is not taking any chances: He may have been able to “withstand” the “indoctrina­tion” of being exposed to ideas he didn’t like, but he doesn’t seem to believe the same could be said for anyone else.

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