“No namecalling? How refreshing!” one commenter wrote on YouTube of yesterday’s ballyhooed MSM “debut” for Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor went one-on-one with CNN’s Jake Tapper for almost twenty minutes, defending both his campaign strategy and his policy agenda — and doing so with both equanimity and specificity.

That raises the question: does that still sell in America’s elections?

We’ll get to that in a moment. Tom Jackson offered his immediate thoughts after the interview aired for our VIP members; if you haven’t yet read them, be sure to do so. He mocks Bakari Sellers for suddenly discovering DeSantis’ gravitas and poise, but for many of CNN’s viewers, it may have come as a shock, considering the coverage DeSantis gets from the mainstream media.

If you missed the interview itself, CNN has it packaged slightly out of its airing order, but in its entirety. Tapper presses DeSantis on hot-button issues, especially on “wokeness” and DEI in the military, Ukraine, trans issues, and abortion, but DeSantis doesn’t wilt or get combative. To use a military phrase of old, DeSantis maintains an even strain … which itself is noteworthy these days:

CNN transcribed the interview in two parts, which makes it easy to reference later. The most interesting part for the immediate narrative purpose would be the portion that CNN chose to highlight — the defense of his campaign. Tapper pressed DeSantis on the polling and the criticisms of his supposedly lackluster launch, and DeSantis responded by reminding his critics that national polling and a fiver will get you a café latté:

TAPPER: So this issue gets into the state of the race because some of your supporters are disappointed that you’re campaign has yet to catch fire the way they would want in terms of polling. One Republican pollster, one who is sympathetic to you, I was asking her about your campaign and she said she thought that the issue was you bumped up at beginning because voters, Republican voters saw you as a more electable conservative like Trump, like Trump without a baggage. But then they say as you go further and further to the right on some of these divisive social issues, they could alienate moderates, suburban moms, et cetera, Republican voters see you as less and less electable. What do you say to that analysis?

DESANTIS: Well, I don’t think it’s true. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, I took a state that had been a one-point state and we won it by 20 percentage votes, 1.5 million votes. Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms. We’re leading a big movement for parents’ rights, to have parents be involved in education, school choice, get the indoctrination out of schools. Of course, there’s bread and butter issues that matter, too. Inflation, and more economic opportunity. Florida’s economy is ranked number one of all 50 states. We’ve worked hard to make that happen. Crime — you see crime in all these different communities that is now even going into suburbs and some areas. So I think there’s a lot — I don’t think that’s the reason.

I think the reason is, is I was being a lot of media attention at the time, coming off the victory. I had to do my job as governor with my legislative session and we had a great legislative session and we did a lot of great things, actual things that appeal to huge majorities of the population. So I think that analysis is wrong. But I had to do that. And so, I was basically taking fire really nonstop since then because a lot of people view me as a threat. I think the left views me as a threat because they think I will beat Biden and actually deliver on all of this stuff, and then, of course, people that have their allegiances within — allegiances on the Republican side, you know, have gone after me. But the reality is, this is a state by state process. I’m not running a campaign to try to juice, you know, whatever we are in the national polls. I mean, I — whatever we did in the CNN compared — whatever, it’s fine. I’m definitely doing better than everybody else.

TAPPER: But state by state obviously.

DESANTIS: It’s state by state.

TAPPER: Right.

DESANTIS: So we’re focused on building an organization. You’ve got to get the people to come out in the middle of January in Iowa to caucus for you. That requires an organization. It requires to know where those votes are. Now, that is not going to make the same type of splash as if you were trying to run ads nationally or do these other things. And so, we’ve been making, you know, really good progress. I think this weekend was really good in terms of the Family Leader and some of the other things we were doing in Iowa. Of course, we’re here in South Carolina. We’re going to do a lot of in New Hampshire. But that’s going to be our focus — focusing on those early states, continuing to build our coalition and going forward.

And I would note, Jake, there is a narrative that they’re almost trying a little too hard with this to try to say, because they’ve been saying that I’ve been doing poorly for my whole time as governor basically. This is always the case during COVID. Oh, you know, he has state open. He’s going to lose. And then he fought Disney, he’s going to lose and then this. So they always want to get there and it never quite works out. And, in fact, I actually remember you did — you did the debate with us in ’18.

TAPPER: Sure.

DESANTIS: And before we did the debate on CNN, and you didn’t have anything to do with this, CNN released a poll saying I was down by 14 or 15 points. Now, that was the narrative at the time. He’s going down. So, I think some of this is motivated reasoning, but I kind of get a kick out when they say he didn’t fundraise well when I did more than Biden and Trump in the second quarter, and I’m just the governor.

All of this gets delivered with confidence, collegiality, and an earnest charm. Tapper even feels compelled to note that he didn’t buy CNN’s poll after DeSantis’ infectious amusement over it.

All in all, it’s a tour de force for DeSantis of sorts, but only because this kind of political skill in jousting with the press has become rather rare. These days, one-on-one interviews with politicians usually turn into contentious arguments rather than discussions. George H. W. Bush may have offered the first example of this in his sparring with Dan Rather, but sparring has become the norm rather than a spicy alternative.

Thus did Bakari Sellers seem surprised by DeSantis’ performance and allowing for a “presidential vibe.” No one who has watched DeSantis closely could possibly have been surprised, but DeSantis hasn’t done a lot of national media over the last few years. Like most governors, DeSantis has focused on local and statewide media, even when their issues get nationalized, as DeSantis’ have over the past two years, especially with Disney.

The surprise comes from the departure from the norms by other politicos over the last several years. Voters, and especially Republican voters, have grown accustomed to politicians who use interviews for open hostility toward the interviewer and the media in general. No small percentage of the GOP primary base wants a fighter who will use every opportunity to attack the media, perhaps especially CNN, as an end in itself. They do not want a reasoned dialogue on policy, because they believe — and not without justification — that Republicans will never get fair treatment from MSM outlets. They want demolition rather than dialogue, and have grown accustomed to that with Donald Trump and other populist Republicans over the last several years.

That brings us back to this interview and whether DeSantis gained from it. By any traditional measure, DeSantis proved his mettle on policy and on presidential mien. In today’s measures, though, did DeSantis muscle up to the occasion? Do voters still value breadth and depth on policy as well as aplomb and confidence in discussing it? And do they value those qualities more than they value attacking opponents (real and perceived) at every opportunity?

If nothing else, DeSantis provided that as yet another contrast in this primary cycle, and another decision point for GOP primary voters. Do we want to fight … or do we want to succeed?