A Brief Glimpse of Seriousness in Unserious Times

R on DeSantis “staked out some new policy ground” during a Thursday night CNN town hall by endorsing a “flat tax” that establishes a single income-tax rate while eliminating most deductions. At least, this was news to CNN’s reporters:

To be fair, DeSantis’s policy preferences were news to many professional political reporters and commentators, myself included. They were not, strictly speaking, news.

An entire news cycle surrounding DeSantis’s support for dissolving the IRS and flattening the tax code came and went in spring 2023. The pro-Trump super PAC “Make America Great Again Inc.” produced a 60-second spot set to the tune of “Old MacDonald” lambasting “Ron ‘DeSalesTax’” for his 2015 vote in favor of the “Fair Tax Act,” which would have replaced income and corporate income taxes, employment taxes, gift taxes, and inheritance taxes with a 23 percent sales tax. As MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown observed at the time, Trump attacked DeSantis “from the left,” and it wouldn’t be the first time.

Even as Trump and his allies tore into DeSantis for his hostility toward the progressive income-tax structure, Trump’s acolytes in the House of Representatives were busily promoting the legislation DeSantis co-sponsored in 2015.

During Thursday night’s town hall, DeSantis also supposedly revealed his intention to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. That, too, is old news. DeSantis retailed his support for deracinating and dismantling the IRS around the same time that he was under attack for backing a simpler tax code. “I think the IRS is a corrupt organization and I think it’s not a friend to the average citizen or taxpayer,” he told conservative broadcaster Dana Loesch in May 2023. Again, DeSantis’s view dovetailed with the most conservative members of the House GOP, some of whom introduced a bill to eliminate the IRS and replace the existing tax code with a national-consumption tax last January.

Why did this brief spasm of policy-oriented electioneering come and go so quietly? Why did so many political observers fail to experience even an eerie sense of déjà vu when DeSantis merely reiterated his support for a long-held policy preference during CNN’s town hall? The episode represents a “good example of how light this campaign has been on tax policy,” Semafor’s David Weigel suggested. Perhaps. The DeSantis campaign certainly didn’t emphasize the candidate’s tax-policy preferences. But it’s far from clear that it would have redounded to DeSantis’s benefit if he or his allies had. That’s not because Republican primary voters have any particular affection for the IRS or are predisposed to look upon flat-tax schemes with skepticism. The campaign failed to emphasize policy because there has been little market for policy throughout this campaign. That’s not a supply-side problem. There is a demand deficit.

The Trump campaign will be quick to insist that it has not been a policy-free enterprise. Just this week, the former president’s name graced the byline on an op-ed published in the Des Moines Register outlining his proposal for a “record-setting deportation operation” and restore his administration’s border-protection policies. But how much space have the nation’s cable-news producers and news writers devoted to parsing the particulars of that plan, insofar as they exist? Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and several other 2024 aspirants have flooded the zone with policy particulars possessed of varying degrees of merit. Did any of them produce so much as one sustained news cycle?

It wasn’t always this way. Tax policy, in particular, used to be the coin of the realm. Having a policy was the price of admission into the Republican political conversation — a low hurdle to clear, but nonetheless one that almost every presidential candidate met. From the long shots to the novelty acts to seasoned front-runners — all had to demonstrate their fiscal bona fides. And reporters and pundits alike pored over the candidates’ white papers with a bookkeeper’s eye. Even Trump, back when he was still auditioning for the role he now occupies, felt compelled to ante up to the 2016 primary with tax-code-reform proposal. He no longer feels so compelled. Indeed, why should he? The voters are not demanding it.

They’re not demanding much of anything, in fact, beyond emerging victorious on the night of November 5, 2024. It has become hard to ignore the utter ambivalence the electorate has displayed toward the events that will follow Election Day. That is a bipartisan condition, but at least Democratic indifference toward the next four years can be explained by their unstated belief that Joe Biden won’t serve out all of them if he were to win reelection. If the polls are to be believed, few Republicans think the vivacious Trump wouldn’t serve the entirety of a next four-year term if he won one. But what is Trump going to do with those years? The question has not been answered to the satisfaction of anyone who isn’t inclined to fill in the blanks on Trump’s behalf.

It is a cliché to observe that this is a “post-policy moment.” It’s equally trite to note that Donald Trump’s persona blots out the sun, and voters only seem to evaluate candidates for the presidency — Republican and Democrat alike — relative to their views on Trump. But that nonchalance betrays a disquieting unseriousness among primary voters. It stands in stark contrast to the challenges the next president will have to navigate.

Whoever wins the 2024 election will inherit a hot war on the European continent that shows few signs today of turning in a direction that benefits Western interests. Israel’s war against Hamas will continue, as will Iran’s provocative proxy attacks on Western interests — the fallout from which will spill into 2025. We have every reason to believe Beijing sees a window of opportunity to capture Taiwan by force, and it’s prospects are unlikely to improve in coming decades. Medicare’s trustees believe the program’s hospital insurance trust fund will be approaching depletion by the end of the next president’s first term. By then, Social Security will be just seven years off from insolvency. And that is just what we can foresee from our historical vantage point, assuming nothing at all alters the trajectory of these events — an assumption that is probably unfounded.

DeSantis’s tax preferences will be picked apart by policy experts and savaged by political observers raised on the belief that a proposal that functionally reduces rates at the top while raising them for lowest-income filers is a nonstarter. That’s still probably correct. But there will be no definitive test of this proposition in 2024 because there is no market for policy and no interest in seriousness. Political observers are today little more than theater critics. We evaluate the lights and the setting and the dramaturgy because there’s little else on offer. And that seems to be just how the voters want it.