Why Awkward Presidential Candidates Stress Us Out
The teen, it seems, wanted to ask the Florida governor an earnest question. “I can’t legally vote,” the 15-year-old said to Ron DeSantis at an Iowa coffee shop recently. “It’s never stopped the other party from not letting you vote,” DeSantis interjected. I think he was trying to say “from letting you vote,” meaning that Democrats supposedly allow 15-year-olds to vote illegally. (DeSantis’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.) But he bungled his words, and either way, this is not a good joke. It’s especially not a good joke when you consider the second half of the teen’s sentence: “But I struggle with major depressive disorder.” Oof. Helen Lewis: The humiliation of Ron DeSantis This wasn’t an isolated moment of interpersonal clumsiness. On the campaign trail, DeSantis frequently behaves like he’s been dragged to a house party and is counting the seconds until he can look at his phone. He dryly remarked to an Icee-slurping kid, “That’s probably a lot of sugar,” and to a crowd of gathered fans that it was …