The potential 2028 candidate no one is talking about who I think could be interesting

Last week, I saw a few stories (or tweets?) pop about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—who famously ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024—is telling prospective 2028 candidates not to wait too long after the 2026 midterms to jump in the presidential race. I guess in hindsight, DeSantis feels he did just that last time around. Thanks for reading Not Quite Miss Congeniality! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Maybe. Though I think truly, the issue was just that DeSantis got obliterated by the Trump machine when Trump realized he had to run again to be absolutely certain he would stay out of jail. And DeSantis was, as many first time GOP presidential candidates are, too newbie and uncomfortable operating at that level to plausibly get the job done. (There's a reason the party tends to nominate candidates who have run for President before). Nonetheless, 2028 seems likely to be well underway shortly, and with that in mind, I've been thinking about a potential candidate that—so far as I am aware—no one else is even talking about. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Can you imagine this man running for President… or even being President? I can! I've vaguely known Duffy for a long time. I first encountered him in 2008, when he did some surrogate work for the GOP ticket and I wanted him to talk to online media. He struck me as very personable and much smarter than people expected—because he's cute (yes, he is!), people assume he's dumb. He had easy-to-spot raw political talent. I thought both he and Paul Ryan were unlikely to finish their careers as just ordinary congressmen, or even committee chairs. Wisconsin has always produced an outsized number of political heavy-hitters, and both were among the then-crop who have since gone on to greater things. So it wasn't surprising to me that after retiring from the House and becoming a lobbyist, Duffy would return to politics. Though much like the younger congressman I vaguely knew, who eschewed some of the 'get on cable news easy' policy topics du jour in favor of unsexy, complicated, but important things like, uh, financial services, Duffy reappeared in another job focused on another not-topline but complex and critical topic: Transportation Secretary. This is not a job where future stars of the party go to shine, it might be said. Nonetheless, Duffy continues to grab attention. And I think he's interesting as someone whose star could continue to rise. Let me outline my case a little more. Apologies in advance for lack of smart brevity (though I do aim for smart long-windedness). Lately, Duffy has been on the receiving end of quite a bit of online mockery. Most recently, there was the negative attention devoted to the old revelation on his and his wife's 'From The Kitchen Table' podcast that the Duffys have a 'get in the mood' romantic playlist. He also earned some jeers from Never Trumpers for his comments to Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, on her podcast about not trusting the government. He's also been the focus of criticism for his 'Great American Road Trip' series, which garnered saggy viewership numbers. The conventional wisdom is that Duffy, while being probably among Trump's three most competent Cabinet secretaries, is also kind of a lightweight, still too much wedded to his now long-ago status as a reality TV star, too willing to drift into TMI-sharing and shirking-tough-work-for-the -limelight (though perhaps less of it, relative to his old 'The Real World' days). But I think these episodes might signal why, and how, Duffy could have a third act in his political career, after the second Trump administration is done and dusted. If he wants it. Let's start with the given that Duffy is a totally acceptable variety of conservative for pretty much everyone in the GOP coalition. Social conservatives like him because he has about 53 children (OK, not really, but he does have nine). Economic conservatives like him because he was firmly within the GOP mainstream during the Tea Party era. MAGAs like him, or at least don't dislike him, because he's adapted just fine to MAGA. I don't know much about his foreign policy record, but I've never heard anyone on any limb of the foreign policy debate complain about him. Duffy is, in short, just fine, philosophically. And again, he was competent as a congressman, and has been very competent as Transportation Secretary, even though he has not had an easy time of it (see for example: Miami airport Amazon Prime plane). To that, though, Duffy adds something extra that I think is vastly more important: The ability to grab broader voter attention and cultivate nontraditional supporters via pop culture. Conventional wisdom says that the way you build a political base is by holding as high-a-profile government office as you can get, unfurling and instituting lots of good and ideologically-consistent-with-your-tribe policy, and ginning up the core base of your political party by advocating policies they want and promising to deliver it if they put you in office. Extra points for coming off as a 'warrior.' But when you stand back from this, it's sort of strange that this conventional wisdom continues to be applied so consistently by politicians, their consultants and staff. Mostly, it results in a ton of 'also-rans' who give really scripted, uncomfortable and stodgy debate performances and short cable news interviews, raise a bunch of money, and tap out after Iowa or New Hampshire. They then go on to be cabinet secretaries, if they're lucky, or party elders, or lobbyists, or they just retire into the ether somewhere. That's something, but as should be obvious, it's not a very reliable pathway to winning. If Donald Trump showed us anything, it should be that the easiest and fastest way to grab the attention—and votes—of a huge swath of Americans, and principally those who pay almost zero attention to politics is simply by leveraging celebrity and the image and brand you have cultivated through pop culture, not service, wonkery, or political media. Oh sure, Trump appealed to lots of people, including those whodospend better than ten percent of their day thinking about politics and policy, because contrary to the dominant Never Trump narrative, there actuallyarebroad policy themes he believes in. Most fundamentally, he doesn't like foreign things or people, unless they are British (and more Scottish than English, Welsh or Irish), or Eastern European (principally women, but he has always had a bit of a fascination by the Eastern chunk of the continent), and with occasional smatterings of perhaps begrudging respect for the Japanese, some Israelis, some Arabian peninsula Arabs, and a little more than the rest of the world, Indians. But broadly, he likes Americans, not foreigners, and this means he is pretty consistent in advocating tariffs and economic policies designed to achieve something as close as possible to autarky, a very restrictionist immigration policy, and on foreign policy, broadly isolationism but with the ability to be pushed and pulled on conundrums like Iran, specifically. The point is, though, policy is not front and center with Trump; personality, and the sense that people 'know' him—for decades sealed through tabloid headlines tens of millions of Americans saw and digested and took on board, and then his starring on The Apprentice—is front and center. Always has been, always will be. For good (his election in 2016) and ill (his prior and current terrible poll numbers). Trump won in 2016, and therefore remained a viable political option in 2020 and 2024, because he had a huge profile in pop culture, not politics. Not only did that mean massive name ID (I will never dispense with the key data point that well into March 2016, still only about 50 percent of people showing up at Trump rallies hadever heardof Marco Rubio). It meant people saw him as inherently successful, an outsider who could effectively manage government and deliver for them. People may say they voted for his policies, and sure, if they voted for him, they did. But the policies weren't the core appeal for most of his voters (I maintain that they still are not). People will say Trump is an aberration, but I don't think this is really true. Loads of successful politicians, and not just in America but around the world, have parlayed their celebrity profile into political results. Consider these names: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Al Franken. Jesse Ventura. Sonny Bono. Bill Bradley. Fred Thompson. Jim Bunning. Burgess Owens. Collin Allred. Ronald Reagan parlayed his celebrity into a lengthy career that culminated in a two-term presidency. While principally having been a war hero, John McCain was also gifted celebrity status thanks to the A&E film 'Faith Of My Fathers' based on McCain's 1999 best-selling book. Success as a non-political author also turned Barack Obama and JD Vance most recently into celebrities. Vance's story was of course broadcast far and wide with the 2020 film version of Hillbilly Elegy. In the UK, before he was London Mayor or British prime Minister, Boris Johnson achieved celebrity status in part through his hosting of popular late night comedy show 'Have I Got News For You.' And Penny Mordaunt, who vied to replace him in the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest raised her profile when she participated in reality TV diving show 'Splash.' Ukraine's Volodomyr Zelenskyy was famously a comedian before he because President. This has been long-winded on my part, but the point is this: If you want to succeed in politics, it's smart to achieve a decent-sized, or even massive, imprint in pop culture first. And strategists inherently know this, even if they eschew putting it into practice in any real concerted sense. Why do you think they always want to book their candidates onto late night comedy shows, or The View? This leads us back to talking about Duffy—and, a little bit, Vance. Vance may have gotten his start as a famous author whose life story was memorialized by Hollywood. That was immensely helpful in him winning his 2022 Ohio Senate race and becoming Trump's VP. But since then, he has drifted very much towards total focus on the political realm. He loves him some political podcasts, engaging with political media, sparring on social media over political topics, and so on. He has become perhaps the rightwing edgelord podcast bro guy, which issomething, but firmly embedded in pop culture it ain't. Of course, after doing The Real World, Duffy moved on to become a congressman and occupying the firmly political world (and then became a lobbyist—pretty 'not Hollywood'). But Duffy's instincts, both with his podcast between 2021 and 2024, and the more recent (if not wholly successful) reality TV roadtrip series, hint at an ongoing interest in getting back to the kind of content that most people—which is to say people who, even in the era of Trump when political coverage is wall-to-wall and almost unavoidable, spend about five minutes a day on this stuff—prefer. And it's easy to see him potentially transitioning out of the Department of Transportation and going right back to pop culture world. He has a facility with pop culture that I don't see in any other name that could potentially run. Let's be honest: If there is to be more 'America the Beautiful,' isn't it easy to see Duffy making an appearance? It's certainly easier to imagine him doing it than Vance, Rubio, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Josh Hawley, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Glenn Youngkin, or any other Republican typically namechecked as a likely 2028 presidential candidate. Does anyone think Duffy wouldn't work as a 'Survivor' or 'Amazing Race' contestant? That he wouldn't play well on 'Celebrity Big Brother' or 'Dancing With The Stars'? OK, 'The Bachelor' is obviously out, as is '90 Day Fiancée.' But 'Celebrity Wheel of Fortune' feels like an obvious gimme, right? You could see TLC or Bravo doing a show about the Duffys, and you could see it being a success. Before you say 'Liz, reality TV is so 2009,' I would just note 'America the Beautiful' is the 7thmost-watched show in America based on most-recent Nielsen ratings. 'Celebrity Wheel Of Fortune' is the 24thmost-watched. And tons of reality TV is watched and consumed via viral social media clips, whose stats are not going to be picked up by Nielsen. Yes, Fox News is the most-watched channel. And if you're running for President as a Republican (or planning to), it's obviously important to have a presence on the network. But that's what every Republican running for President (and quite a few Democrats, too) will aim to achieve. What they won't aim to achieve, and not just because their strategists won't tell them to, but because they'reutterly uninterestingfor this market, is the reality TV-game show vein of content that gets you on the radar of normies, low-propensity (but margin of victory-delivering), and not massively political Americans. These are people who Trump could get in 2016, and Cruz, Rubio and Kasich could not. They're what made the math work. Duffy could corner that market—if he wanted to. Probably the smarter thing to do here is actually develop content that fits this bill, but which he controls—so there's no risk of him getting turfed off a show or channel, because he might be using someone else's show to propel his political career. Something in this general vein could easily be stood up and pushed far and wide, gaining mass followers and influence via social media—probably vaguely what Duffy had in mind with the roadtrip series, but something that will inherently work better when he is no longer serving as a department secretary in the federal government (and, ahem, Donald Trump's federal government, specifically). No, I don't know what that is. I'm not Mark Burnett. About as far as I will go is that I do think it should feature Duffy's family. It should feature imperfections and screw-ups and bloopers. And it should focus on him as a human, not him as a potential President. No one wants to watch campaign material, or pre-campaign material. It should show Duffy in some form of leadership role (not just 'Dad'), but what that role might be I will leave to others to debate. But if Duffy thinks he might ever want to run for the big job—and candidly, he'd be a lot more appealing than a number of these other names I've mentioned, so he probably should—he might want to borrow Burnett's brain for a bit and concept this out. It could give him an interesting, and big, advantage over other contenders, including Vance—for whom even his appearance on The View felt a bit strained and difficult to execute, because he's not a natural-born, made-for-TV character, whereas Duffy is. Now, go ahead and get on with calling me crazy. I'll be back with some other thoughts about other potential contenders in due course. Thanks for reading Not Quite Miss Congeniality! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.