In the week since he easily won re-election, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t said much about his political future.   

  It wasn’t necessary.  Speculation is rife that DeSantis is considering a presidential run, using the momentum gained from his sweeping Florida victory as a springboard for a national campaign.   

  Donald Trump is also paying attention.   

  “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — except maybe his wife,” Trump said on Election Day.   

  Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, echoed that sentiment on Monday.  “I can tell you that these primaries are very messy and very raw,” he said.  “So wouldn’t it be nicer for him, and I think he knows this, to wait until 2028?”   

  While the Trump wing of the party wants DeSantis to wait until at least 2028 to launch a White House bid, there’s a simple reason why he shouldn’t — and it all comes down to timing.   

  Politics is all about timing.  And history proves it.   

  When Barack Obama announced he would run for president less than two years after being elected to the Senate, skeptics were legion — insisting he hadn’t put in the time to earn the right to run.   

  Those skeptics didn’t go away.  But Obama didn’t completely block the idea that he was too inexperienced for a national campaign, and, in fact, it was something that appealed to some voters.   

  Obama understood that the timing was right, even though Hillary Clinton was the heavy favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Timing was everything.   

  On the other hand, consider former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  In 2012, he was heavily courted to run for president, as Republicans worried they did not have a suitable candidate who could defeat Obama.   

  Christy ultimately decided not to participate in the race.  “Now is not my time,” Christie said in October 2011. “I have a commitment in New Jersey that I just won’t give up.”   

  Christie finally ran for president – ​​in 2016. And it didn’t go well.  He left after a disastrous sixth-place finish in the New Hampshire qualifier.  Christie then endorsed Trump and spent the rest of the campaign pandering to him, tarnishing his image.  Now Christie is trying to reinvent himself as someone willing to tell Trump the truth.  But the damage is done.   

  The examples of Obama (on the positive end) and Christie (on the negative end) should guide DeSantis as he makes his decision.  Four years is a very long time.  Things change in politics.  Anyone who has momentum now may not have the same momentum in a year, much less in four years.   

  DeSantis is, right now, the hottest thing going on in the Republican Party.  Doing anything other than running for president given this status quo—even if it means going against Trump—could very well look like a huge mistake in two years.