Ron DeSantis needs to learn to make eye contact?!?

Oomph.

(Ron DeSantis)

On Sunday, the New York Times put out a piece bashing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ slow start in the 2024 presidential race.

There’s was lots in it but it was a paragraph toward the end that really stood out to me. It’s this:

“The governor and his team have had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship: small talk, handshaking, eye contact.”

Um, what?

They had a meeting to make clear that the candidate needs to talk to people, shake hands and — gulp — make eye contact?

Like, that seems like the sort of stuff you can’t teach? A candidate either has it or doesn’t. I mean, a person either has it or they don’t right? My 10-year-old makes eye contact with adults when he speaks to them!

And it’s not the first time we’ve heard this sort of stuff coming out about DeSantis.

There was the “pudding fingers” ad. And this from former Michigan Rep. Dave Trott, who went out of his way to email POLITICO about his relationship — or lack thereof — with DeSantis:

“If you’re going to go into politics, kind of a fundamental skill that you should have is likability. I don’t think [he] has that he never developed any relationships with other members that I know of. You’d never see him talking on the floor with other people or palling around. He’s just a very arrogant guy, very focused on Ron DeSantis.”

Trott went on to call DeSantis an “asshole” who doesn’t “care about people.”

Then there was this weirdness from a recent international trip when DeSantis was asked about running for president.

And this laugh from over the weekend in Iowa.

And this exchange — over pork chops also this past weekend, as reported by the Washington Post:

“That’s a good Iowa chop there people — look at that, huh?” the Republican congressman [Randy Feenstra] from Iowa said with a grin.

DeSantis, as he often does, steered the conversation toward policy.

“I can’t believe … that Supreme Court, court ruling with the California stuff,” the Florida governor said, turning to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on his right. He was apparently referring to a recent decision that upheld a ban on certain pork sales.

It was a relevant reference here in the top pork-producing congressional district in the country. But it was also a neat encapsulation of the Florida governor’s preference for policy talk over chit chat as he goes through the rituals of a bid for national office.

As I have written before, in a vacuum, no one thing like this really matters. Politicians are on camera — and being watched — all the time. Little weird things happen from time to time — to every candidate.

The problem for DeSantis is that there is now a storyline out there that he is a little odd — at best!

His admirers insist he is simply shy -- and, as the Iowa example above demonstrates, more focused on policy than interpersonal relationships.

Maybe!

But Donald Trump, who is now leading DeSantis by a considerable margin, has, of late, seized on DeSantis’ seeming awkwardness.

“He's got no personality,” Trump said of DeSantis in an interview with The Messenger this week. “And I don't think he's got a lot of political skill.”

He made a similar point just a few days ago.

“The problem with Ron DeSanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are not yet available,” said Trump. “Almost all congressmen and women that served with him and knew him well supported me, some of them surprisingly so because of their relationship with Ron.”

And again in March.

“Number one, he's got no personality,” Trump told reporters traveling with him.  “That tends to be bad for a politician.”

Like him or hate him, Trump is VERY good at driving home a negative message. And making it stick. (Think “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” from 2016.)

And once he latches onto something that works, he is like a dog on a bone — never letting go.

Not all the news is bad for DeSantis, however.

On Sunday the Times wrote a very favorable piece about his Iowa trip headlined: “DeSantis Impresses in Iowa, Showing Up an Absent Trump.” That piece included these lines:

“After wrapping up his events on Saturday evening elsewhere in the state, Mr. DeSantis headed to Jethro’s BBQ Southside, where he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, stood on a table outside and spoke to a cheering crowd.”

Standing on a table! Ok! That is basic candidate stuff!

So, maybe DeSantis is learning. And it’s possible that once he becomes an official candidate — which is expected to happen sometime soon — that he smooths out his performance on the campaign trail, and Trump’s attacks on him as having no personality (or maybe, even worse, a weird one) go away.

The problem for DeSantis is that stories like the one in the New York Times just keep coming out. And fueling the notion that the candidate hasn’t even mastered — or begun to master — the basics of human interaction.

I mean, eye contact? Really?!