Scotland's Casey O'Neill vows she won't "quit" after back-to-back losses in the UFC.

On Saturday afternoon, with just over six weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis told a story about how he once bravely stood up to the Special Olympics.

He was speaking atop a small platform in a partitioned-off section of a former roller rink in Newton, Iowa, dubbed “the Thunderdome.” The anecdote, like so many, had something to do with the tyranny of vaccine mandates. DeSantis said he had met a family at the Iowa State Fair, and that one of their children had wanted to participate in the Special Olympics, but wasn’t vaccinated. As it happened, the games were being held in Florida, where DeSantis serves as governor. “Well, we don’t have discrimination in Florida on that,” he said, meaning vaccination status. “So we were able to tell the Special Olympics, you let all the athletes compete!” People hooted.

This narrative followed a familiar arc: The Florida governor had confronted something he didn’t like, and, after a brief crusade, emerged victorious. DeSantis plays the part of a fearless maverick pursuing justice—even if that means picking a fight with a well-respected nonprofit. All year long on the campaign trail, self-awareness has seemed to elude him. “What you don’t want to do is repel people for no reason,” DeSantis told the room a little later.

[Mark Leibovich: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis]

Saturday’s speech marked the culmination of DeSantis’s 99-county tour of Iowa. The event may have been intended as a moment of triumph, but the crowd on this cold, dreary afternoon was, at approximately 400 attendees, not at capacity. Outside the venue, you could buy buttons that said RON ’24 HE’S KIND OF A BIG DEAL! with an illustration of DeSantis mashed up with Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy. Other merchandise leaned harder into DeSantis’s culture-warrior reputation: SOCIALISM SUCKS, ANNOY A LIBERAL WORK HARD BE HAPPY, CRITICAL RACE THEORY with a no-smoking slash through it, and DESANTISLAND with the Disney D.

Is this angle working? Despite his GOP fame and high-profile endorsements, his polling average is trending in the wrong direction. He has more or less staked his candidacy on winning Iowa. But now he’s almost tied with former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the polls there, and elsewhere, for distant second place to former President Donald Trump. He may soon slip to third. His super PAC, Never Back Down, just fired its CEO, Kristin Davison, after nine days on the job. (She had taken over for the previous CEO, who had resigned around Thanksgiving, along with the group’s chair.) I asked Never Back Down what potential voters should make of all these changes. The group’s spokesperson sent a statement: “Never Back Down has the most organized, advanced caucus operation of anyone in the 2024 primary field, and we look forward to continuing that great work to help elect Gov. DeSantis the next President of the United States.”

One of Saturday’s warm-up speakers, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, attempted to humanize DeSantis for her constituents. She gestured to the importance of DeSantis achieving the “full Grassley”—a nod to Iowa’s senior senator, Chuck Grassley, who visits all of the state’s 99 counties every year to meet voters. (DeSantis’s team temporarily rebranded the milestone as a “Full DeSantis,” with placards peppering the venue.) “Listen, Iowans want the opportunity to look you in the eye; they want the opportunity to size that candidate up just a little bit,” Reynolds told the room. “It’s also really important for the candidates—I’ve said it really helps them kind of do the retail politics.” She spoke of DeSantis and his wife taking in all of the state’s offerings over the past year—Albert the Bull, Casey’s breakfast pizza. “And I’m going to tell ya, I think they’re having some fun!” Reynolds said unconvincingly.  

DeSantis did not appear to be fully enjoying himself in Newton. More than a few people have noted that his wife, Casey, is the more natural politician, and could herself be a stronger future candidate. As she introduced her husband on Saturday, he stood a few feet behind her, staring intensely into the back of her head. She was confident and effortless at the mic; Ron didn’t seem to know what to do with his eyes, or his mouth, or, especially, his hands. Clasp them loosely below his belly button? Put them on either side of his waist like Superman? He looked unsettled as he waited for her to finish.

When his turn to speak came, DeSantis began by trying to follow Reynolds’s lead. He recalled his visit to the Field of Dreams baseball field in Dubuque County. (“And our kids were there and everything like that.”) He fumbled the name of  a famous bakery and was swiftly corrected by many members of the audience. He offered his affection for other Iowa staples: ice cream, cheese curds. “We brought a whole bunch of cheese curds back to the state of Florida, which was a lot of fun,” DeSantis proclaimed. No means of pandering was off limits. Iowa, he declared “will begin the revival of the United States of America.” He hinted that, as president, he’d even move the Department of Agriculture from Washington, D.C., to Iowa.

Watching DeSantis up close as he lumbers through these moments of his campaign is almost enough to elicit sympathy. One of Saturday’s attendees, Caleb Grossnickle, a 25-year-old cybersecurity analyst from Ames, told me that he found DeSantis endearing. “I mean, he does seem a little awkward at times. But I think, honestly, it just shows that he’s a normal human,” he said. “He’s just a normal guy who’s trying to run for president, trying to make change.” Grossnickle told me that he was also interested in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent.

One of DeSantis’s highest-profile Iowa surrogates, the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, was arguably the most captivating speaker on the bill. “Let me bathe this thing in prayer,” he said. He then launched into an invocation that ended with “Lord, when he does win the Iowa caucuses and when he does go through and win the early states, make people know that this is of you, by you, and for you, Lord.”

Vander Plaats pointed out that voting for DeSantis is not the same as voting “against Trump.” But he also preached the need for a candidate who “fears God,” adding that “the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.” That noble idea morphed into a jab. “We need somebody to know that they fear God; they don’t believe they are God.”

A 46-year-old attendee from Ottumwa, Iowa, named Jeremy had brought his daughter along to see DeSantis up close. He told me that he’d twice voted for Trump and would vote for him a third time if he gets the nomination, though he admitted he finds him “distasteful.” DeSantis, he added, is his favorite candidate, and “more of a classy person.”

[David A. Graham: The 2024 presidential race: a cheat sheet]

Later in the afternoon, I approached Vander Plaats in the back of the room. I asked him about his line relating to the type of person who believes they are God. Vander Plaats said he was referring to “the left.” I also brought up how DeSantis seemed to lack interpersonal skills, and asked if he thought that was a fair criticism of the man he had endorsed. “I think it’s overhyped,” Vander Plaats said, but he didn’t outright dismiss the notion. “Right now, I think Americans want a real leader to get things done versus, you know, Hey, do I want to sit on the couch with them and watch a football game?”

Yet some people really do love him. In my conversations with attendees, many of them pointed to DeSantis’s follow-through as the core of his appeal. A 55-year-old supporter named Todd Lyons told me that he and his wife had driven four hours west from their home in Normal, Illinois, that morning to be there. They’d never seen DeSantis in the flesh. “He says he’ll do something and he does it,” Lyons said. “As opposed to with Trump, you see a tweet where he’s going to do something and talk about how amazing it’s going to be and then he wouldn’t follow through.” Even if DeSantis doesn’t get the nomination, Lyons told me he planned to write in the governor’s name on the ballot. Anne Wolford, a 74-year-old retiree from Grinnell, Iowa, told me that she had liked South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, but he had just recently dropped out, and now she was interested in DeSantis. “I think we’ve got to have somebody that’s got the gumption to go head-to-head with China, Russia, and North Korea. And I think with his military background, he can maybe achieve that.”

Two nights earlier, DeSantis exhibited his gumption in a TV debate with Governor Gavin Newsom of California. At one point, DeSantis brandished a “poop map” purportedly showing the places in San Francisco where human feces could be found on streets and sidewalks. (Practically the entire image was tinged brown.) In Iowa, DeSantis posited that Newsom was carrying out a shadow campaign for the presidency. “We cannot assume that they are actually gonna run [Joe] Biden,” he said. He seethed at the Democratic establishment. “We are not gonna be gaslit by people who think we’re dumb,” he said a little later.

During his stump speech, he spent a good deal of time talking about the pandemic. He promised that Anthony Fauci, now in retirement, would face a “reckoning” over all things COVID-19. But even the demonized Fauci serves as a symptom of a larger disease, in DeSantis’s worldview. The field of medicine, he warned, has been infected by a “woke ideology,” and Harvard Medical School doctors “basically take, like, a woke Hippocratic oath.” (DeSantis holds degrees from Harvard and Yale.) He also punched down, endorsing the idea of imposing fees on remittances that foreign workers send back to their home countries. He believes these are the ideas that will win him the presidency.

DeSantis attacks Trump more than most of his competitors (with the exception of Chris Christie), but he’s also assumed the role of Trump’s primary target. Nearly every day, the Trump campaign sends out press releases attacking DeSantis, with one recurring item that it calls the “kiss of death.” A sample from Friday mocked his stature: “KISS OF DEATH: Small Expectations, Smaller Candidate.” On Saturday morning, hours before DeSantis’s big achievement of stumping in every county, the Trump campaign sent out a preemptive press release: “Republican candidate for president Ryan Binkley, who is polling at 0%, outperformed Ron DeSantis by becoming the first person to visit all 99 counties in Iowa earlier this month.”

[Read: Inside the mind of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

It’s hard to understand what DeSantis’s real plan is, as Trump is still so far ahead in the polls. In an emailed statement, DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, David Polyansky, said, “The collective firepower of Team DeSantis remains unmatched” and that the campaign “will carry the support of the most robust turnout operation in modern Iowa history into success on January 15.” Even if DeSantis wins the Iowa caucuses or comes in second, though, that doesn’t necessarily predict a victory in the New Hampshire primary. That state’s motto—“Live free or die”—is out of sync with what DeSantis has done in Florida, using the government to impose book bans and a six-week abortion limit. If by some chance Trump were to lose New Hampshire, it would probably be to Haley, not to DeSantis—and such a victory would position Haley for more success in her home state of South Carolina.

In Newton, leaning against the rear wall was a 66-year-old man, in a Kangol-style hat and a University of Iowa pullover, named Vern Schnoebelen. He’s the lead singer and harmonica player of a band that had played the Thunderdome the night before. He told me that he and his friend had snuck into the VIP section, where the bar was, earlier that afternoon. He had come out on Saturday not because he loves DeSantis but simply because he lives nearby and this seemed like a big event. He told me that, come caucus time, if Trump is running away in the polls, he’ll intentionally support the candidate in third or fourth place to encourage them to stay active in the party. “I don’t want them to lose heart,” he said. “We never know what’s going to happen with Trump. Who knows what’s going to come out of the woodwork?”

He told me that he had voted for Trump twice, and would support whoever became the GOP nominee, Trump included. I asked whether anything about Trump’s various indictments bothered him. “No, I think it’s all a fallacy,” he said. “I think most of it’s made up.”

That’s what DeSantis is competing with. He’ll have to try not to lose heart.

To me, she was always Mrs. O’Connor, the mom next door. Yet she was always—even then, in the mid-1960s in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona—the person who would be Justice O’Connor. Long before her breakthrough appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court made her one of America’s most renowned jurists, Sandra Day O’Connor showed the qualities of pragmatism, wisdom, and patience with human frailty that marked her time on the Court—and make her legacy more precious than ever today.

When I was 6, my family moved into a brand-new house in Phoenix. Before the construction was finished, I encountered a boy my age playing amid the studs, wires, and boxes of nails. (Boys could do such things back then.) One of the three O’Connor boys, he turned out to be a neighbor. Because we went to school together down the street, I found myself often going in and out of the O’Connors’ house, a low-slung desert rambler, built distinctively with adobe bricks. I still recall the pitch and inflection of Mrs. O’Connor’s greeting: “Well, hello, Jon Rauch!”

Mrs. O’Connor did not put on airs. For me, the highlight of every year was Halloween at the O’Connors’ place, which they converted into a multiroom haunted house. Cackling wickedly and stirring a bubbling cauldron of dry ice, Mrs. O’Connor dressed up as a black-caped, pointy-hatted witch, while her husband, John, lumbered around with a monster mask on his face and a plastic knife through his neck.

Yet I soon became aware that the mom next door was a formidable personage. She seemed to be involved in every kind of community activity. My father, himself a lawyer, told me that Mrs. O’Connor was a hard-driving, brilliant, and omnisciently prepared attorney. He related how, when she was an assistant state attorney general and he was representing a welfare claimant, he’d experienced every litigator’s worst nightmare: In open court, she’d uncorked an authoritative statute he had never heard of. (He lost.) No one was surprised when she was appointed to the state Senate and rose to be its first—and the nation’s first—female majority leader. Following that, she was appointed a judge on Arizona’s Court of Appeals.

Phoenix in the ’60s and ’70s was a conservative, solidly Republican state—home to Barry Goldwater, the fiercely anti-communist, anti-union U.S. senator and 1964 Republican presidential candidate. (His hilltop house was within sight of my neighborhood.) For the most part, though, Arizona’s brand of Republican was buttoned-down and businesslike. William Rehnquist, the future U.S. chief justice and another Phoenix Republican fixture in those days, was considered far-right. Sandra Day O’Connor embodied the party’s center: conservative but pragmatic, oriented toward solving problems rather than creating or amplifying them.

The same no-nonsense, get-it-done attitude that made her a person who befitted any boardroom or community group made her the kind of legislator and judge around whom people gathered and for whom things happened. You knew you could rely on Mrs. O’Connor to be the grown-up in the room.

That persona traveled with her to the country’s highest court. In 1981, when Potter Stewart’s seat opened and President Ronald Reagan pledged to fill it with a woman, I told friends that I knew the perfect person—but that the president would never pick her, because she was too little known and insufficiently ideological for the party’s already fiercely conservative right. But Goldwater, of all people, went to bat for her. So began a Supreme Court career that, to this day, remains underappreciated.

Justice O’Connor’s jurisprudence flummoxed and annoyed legal scholars. She had no overarching judicial philosophy, unlike conservatives such as the combative originalist Antonin Scalia, the purist libertarian Clarence Thomas, or the committed textualist Neil Gorsuch. Her opinions could be murky and temporizing. She was conservative, no doubt about that, but she was also a justice who had previously been a working politician, and it showed in her holdings: She looked for solutions and, more important, for ways to ensure that regular people could look for solutions. She understood the Court’s role as political—not in the activist sense of legislating from the bench, but in the realist sense of seeing the Court as embedded in a political matrix where rigid doctrine could do more harm than good. Known for years as the Court’s swing vote—for a while, some called it the O’Connor Court—she was also, on many occasions, its anchor to reality.

It was like her to rule, in Grutter v. Bollinger, that affirmative action could continue in university admissions—but only for a while, not forever. It was like her, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, to trim but not eliminate the constitutional right to an abortion. Her difference-splitting holdings infuriated constitutional purists on both sides, but she followed a higher kind of constitutionalism: a recognition that not every issue is ripe to be decided judicially.

Sometimes, like the mom she was, she needed to tell the kids to go back and try harder. Ambiguity and compromise, she saw, could be vital aspects of Supreme Court jurisprudence. If academics and ideologues disapproved, so much the worse for them.

That the lack of an O’Connor on today’s Supreme Court has become a costly deficit goes almost without saying. The Court is often criticized for being too political, but Justice O’Connor’s virtue was that, having been a politician, she had an innate feel for consensus and consent. Today, all nine justices were appointed from U.S. appellate courts or legal academia. None has run for or held elective office. The result has been the kind of sweeping, ideologically inflected jurisprudence that Justice O’Connor avoided. She is rightly remembered as the Court’s first woman; she should also be remembered, alas, as its last politician.

In adulthood, I mostly lost touch with Mrs. O’Connor. Still, with time, I only grew in my appreciation of her qualities. They have become lamentably scarce in American public life and especially in the Republican Party, which owed her so much and yet became so hostile to her legacy. After she retired from the Court, I was surprised when she took up the cause of civics education. Wasn’t this too marginal and small-bore a cause for a person of her stature? Now I understand that, as usual, she was practical and prescient.

Back in August 1981, when she was in Phoenix awaiting confirmation, I made the familiar backyard trek for a hello visit. Despite her sudden elevation to global fame, there she was, the same Mrs. O’Connor, breading fish filets in the kitchen.

Twenty-four years later, in 2005, she received my father and me in her Supreme Court chambers. At that point, she had submitted her resignation from the Court, but the recent death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist delayed her departure (which would not occur until the following year). She expressed frustration, because her husband’s increasing dementia needed her full attention. She was still the problem-solver, the responsibility-taker, the adult in the room—and she was needed elsewhere.

More than ever, her spirit is needed here, today.