Josh Warhees writes about politics for Slate.

He says, if you want to understand who Beto O'Rourke is as a politician,

all you have to do is look at how he rolled out his presidential campaign.

Well, Beto went about it kind of in an orthodox way, which I guess is, you know, kind of right on brand.

He went from, you know, months of playing that, I don't know, maybe I'm still thinking about it.

And then two weeks ago, he says, I've made a decision,

but I'm not ready to share it, which was kind of weird.

Then O'Rourke started popping up in public. He went to a screening of a documentary about his failed bid for Senate, but he refused to answer questions about whether he was running in 2020.

And then all of a sudden, Wednesday, it was just, bam, it happened.

He had the glossy Vanity Fair cover story come out, which clearly he was waiting for.

But then as opposed to waiting to the next day for the announcement, he classically stepped on what would have been a very polished rollout by sending a text message to a local

TV station.

I don't know if it was on purpose

confirming, but effectively confirming he was going to run. But again, that's kind of on brand for

Beto. His whole thing is not having poll testing and not having focus groups. The rough edge is kind of that

grungy 90s millennial that he is,

that kind of is how he intentionally runs. So it's tough to know what's an accident and what's

not. Kind of the bugs are the features and the features are the bugs with Beto.

After O'Rourke declared he was in the race, it was as if a simmering Bet-o backlash was turned up to full boil. Some people

rolled their eyes at how he announced his candidacy while sitting next to his adoring nine-years

younger wife. Others scoffed at the weeks he spent soul-searching and blogging before finally

declaring himself a candidate. But Josh looked at something else.

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