‘Susie Wiles is a great choice for President Trump’s chief of staff,’ said Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the man Donald Trump so humiliated in 2016.
Uh oh. Bush’s approval of the second Trump administration’s first major appointment instantly rang alarm bells in some quarters of the new American right.
Wiles, who ran Trump’s campaign with Chris LaCivita, is seen by some Trumpist insiders as a suspiciously old-fashioned operative, in hock to the moneyed interests who used to run the Republican party. Over the summer, we heard whispers of clashes between Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s most doggedly loyal aide, and Wiles and LaCivita over funding.
Wiles once wrote that her specialty is making ‘order out of chaos’
But Wiles is not some secret agent for NeverTrumpism. She worked on the Trump campaign in 2016, for starters, and she has been quietly instrumental in his revival over the last four years. Her elevation signals that Team Trump now wants to head towards a more harmonious Republican future. It also suggests that the future of America is all about Florida, baby.
Florida is, increasingly, the centre of the Republican party’s gravity, and not just because the Donald’s club in Mar-a-Lago is the Trumpian equivalent of the Palace of Versailles.
Not so long ago, the state was a key battleground in American elections. Barack Obama won there narrowly in 2008 and by a whisker in 2012. Yet the advent of Trumpism has turned the Sunshine State into a Republican stronghold. On Tuesday, Trump triumphed in Florida with a sizeable 13 per cent majority.
Wiles, a mild-mannered Episcopalian whose manners and politics are more moderate than some in Trump’s sphere, has been a key figure in this transformation. A longtime Floridian operative – hence Jeb’s backing – she understands the state’s power dynamics as well as anyone.
She was a key player in rise of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but then fell out with Team Ron after becoming embroiled in a complicated power struggle involving Casey, the governor’s wife. The DeSantis family felt that Wiles, with her support for Trump, was getting in the way of their ever greater ambitions. So they pushed her out.
Thst ended badly for DeSantis and well for Donald Trump, as Wiles and her network helped Don destroy Ron in the Republican primaries and then take back the White House.
Wiles once wrote that her specialty is making ‘order out of chaos’. That presumably makes her invaluable to Trump, whose instinctive and transactional approach often creates havoc. Moreover, in her understanding of Florida, Wiles has a unique insight into the coming reality of American politics.
Florida has a reputation for being a bit of a tropical backwater. ‘I like Florida,’ said the great American comedian George Carlin. ‘Everything is in the 80s. The temperatures, the ages and the IQ’s.’
But Florida has been thriving in recent years, thanks to an influx of capital and aspirational people escaping the suffocating progressive politics of California and other Democrat-run states.
Moreover, with its mixed population of rich and poor, whites, Latinos and African-Americans, plus an expanding number of senior-citizen retirees, Florida strikes demographic experts as the bellwether American state.
As Philip Bump, author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America, put it, Florida is ‘the state that looks most like most like what we’d expect the United States to look like in 2060.’ By basking in Sunshine State, in other words, Team Trump’s new coalition has the potential to thrive for decades to come.
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