What We Learned Reading Ron DeSantis’s Books
About this episode
The central question is what Ron DeSantis's two books reveal about the kind of president he would be. Critic Carlos Lozada compares DeSantis's 2011 Tea Party tract, "Dreams from Our Founding Fathers," with his 2023 campaign memoir, "The Courage to Be Free." He finds a striking transformation: from a constitutionalist devoted to limited government to a populist who wields state power against disfavored corporations, as in the Disney fight. The newer book, Lozada argues, is organized as an enemies list, with "courage" meaning the willingness to attack them and "wokeness" the all-purpose villain. He traces the book's intellectual framework to political theorist Angelo Codevilla's populism, with its anti-pluralist edge, notes the striking absence of economics, and reads an implicit critique of Trump between the lines. The episode closes with handicapping of the 2024 Republican race.