In An Honor Fight, DeSantis Loses
Ron DeSantis’s campaign is in trouble, and he knows it.
From his prominent supporters’ racism, to his troubling positions on criminal justice, to his questionably effective “war” with the Disney corporation, there are numerous potential causes of DeSantis’s campaign woes.
Social psychology, however, suggests that DeSantis’s actual problem is that he’s trying to beat Trump at a psychological game; a game in which Trump is the better player. The game in question is part of what social psychologists call “honor culture.”
Although honor has regional and national variations, all honor cultures share two core themes: First, they place central value on reputations for strength, toughness, and competence. Second, honor cultures require aggressive retaliation against threats and insults, perceiving any failure to do so as weakness. Honor endorsers are thus willing to risk everything, regardless of the consequences, in pursuit of reputation.
This recklessness is Trump’s particular expertise. DeSantis’s apparent unwillingness to match this recklessness is exactly why his campaign is failing.
DeSantis has certainly tried to make himself look tough with such crime policies as lowering the threshold for applying the death penalty, a spat with Disney that focuses on retaliating against their “woke” agenda, and an anti-immigration stance so extreme even Fox News finds it troubling. In terms of populism, DeSantis is a truer believer than Trump, but Trump’s honor-based toughness is a matter of personality, not policy.
Trump’s appeal to his supporters is that he is a “fighter”—an appeal that he has effectively weaponized independently from his policy positions. DeSantis’s attempt to present himself as a “sane” alternative to Trump misses the point.
In terms of proving himself a “fighter,” DeSantis has yet to land a single blow against Trump. Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign have landed several, from derogatory nicknames, to pedophilia accusations, to the use of schoolyard-level jokes about DeSantis’s testicles.
DeSantis has superiorly refused to fight back, and has even promised to pardon Trump over January 6th if he is elected. To honor endorsers, this refusal to retaliate is tantamount to DeSantis admitting weakness: that he is less tough, less of a man, and therefore a less viable political option.
Republicans hoping to move beyond Trump are therefore left with two options.
The first is to play Trump’s game and play to win. They must attack him on more than policy, retaliating against every insult, nickname, and slur. They must take advantage of his every gaffe and foible by “going low.” Considering Trump’s notoriously fragile ego (tiny hands, anyone?), a candidate who embraces honor culture’s no-holds-barred approach to conflict might easily best Trump.
But this option comes with many potential costs. While academics have studied how honor can be evolutionarily advantageous for individuals and their immediate ingroups (i.e., families) in harsh, lawless climates, in modern society honor produces numerous undesirable outcomes. These can include violence against women, increased rates of argument-related homicide, increased suicide rates, and refusal to seek mental or even physical healthcare out of fear of appearing “weak.”
Considering the shambles in which Trump left the Republican party after his 2020 loss, as well as the numerous failures of Trump-backed midterm candidates, it is clear that honor is not really an effective political strategy either. Even if a candidate harnesses enough clout to defeat Trump at the honor game, he or she is unlikely to offer a positive alternative in any way—save perhaps hair style.
The other alternative is for candidates to abandon honor entirely and make a new appeal to voters. While seeking common ground with ideological opponents and avoiding outrage-based appeals might not appeal to honor-oriented constituents, it will likely succeed amongst the broader politically exhausted public. Not only could such an approach provide political victories, but it might also avoid the public distaste for Trump’s honor-based strategies and its accompanying political failures.
Admittedly, abandoning Trump’s nonsense might be taken as a weakness by honor endorsers. The unlikely success of politicians like Glenn Youngkin, however, suggest that there may indeed be a future for politicians on the Right who reach across the aisle and avoid honor-based political strategies.
If anyone in the current political field can successfully beat Trump at his own honor-based game, it is probably Ron DeSantis (especially given how effectively he has lived rent-free in Trump’s head recently). But if the Right truly wants to move beyond Trump, beating him will not be enough. A successful, long-term path forward requires abandoning his honor game and seeking a new path forward, a path free from Trump and the psychological forces that produced him in the first place.