Gavin Newsom Is Not Ready for Prime Time

Like Charlie Cooke, I agree about the fundamental meaninglessness of Thursday night’s Fox News “Red State/Blue State Debate” featuring Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom. We do not live in a serious world with serious politics, either nationally or in the party’s primary electorates. And even if we did, two of the three participants in the night’s events weren’t particularly serious people either, and the third currently trails Donald Trump by a 48-point margin or so as the second-place challenger for the Republican primary.

None of this matters, in a way. But in another way, it was a fairly interesting exercise, revealing Gavin Newsom to a national audience he rarely confronts and demonstrating that, while Ron DeSantis will not be president short of Donald Trump having a surprise encounter with the Reaper in the next few months, he is utterly in command of his brief even if he lacks some of the qualities necessary to prevail in our present primary environment.

So, even though I never need to see or hear Sean Hannity say “we’re going to let this debate breathe” ever again, and he was predictably biased as a moderator in terms of how he framed his debate questions (I minded this less), my primary takeaway from the debate is that Gavin Newsom clearly seems to have overestimated his abilities. I have long been concerned about him as a national threat, given Joe Biden’s weakness and Kamala’s unacceptability, and while I walked into this debate resigned to its ultimate meaninglessness (I remain convinced of that, at least in terms of the 2024 Republican primary), I also half-expected DeSantis to falter, appearing sour and unlikable while he was overwhelmed by Newsom’s oleaginous charm.

I’m sure Trump’s partisans will confidently announce this occurred regardless — that Twitter engagement doesn’t generate itself, after all — but it did not: Because the contest focused on California’s record specifically versus Florida’s, Ron DeSantis came as prepared as I’ve ever seen anyone for a political debate in recent years and delivered a rather surprising thrashing to Newsom. He was as relentless as a jackhammer when it came to comparing facts between both states, and deployed his factoids with real skill and timing, with a tone that generally didn’t seem misplaced — though neither governor looked good when talking over one another (Newsom was aggressive about it, frequently talking over Hannity as well, which won’t earn him any criticism from his intended audience).

Newsom seems not to have thought he was going to be seriously challenged (inconceivable) or was particularly determined to brazenly lie, elide facts, and cherry-pick in his attempts at both defense and offense. A number of times it was clear he was intentionally doing Trump’s dirty work, leveling facially absurd attacks at DeSantis like he was a “lockdown governor” (imagine this attack from Gavin Newsom) that nevertheless echo talking points from Trump and his acolytes. But most of the time he was on the defensive — California’s record is notably difficult to defend in recent years, especially in this setting — and he seemed unprepared to do anything except either baldly lie about statistics displayed on-screen or employ clumsy deceit. His sleight of hand on California’s murder rate versus Florida’s was emblematic: Hannity literally displayed California’s murder rate versus Florida’s, and Newsom proceeded to simply pretend the statistics didn’t exist, and instead tried to pretend Florida was worse than California because of gun-murder rates. DeSantis was having none of it, and pointed out just how ridiculous a dodge it was. Then he said that DeSantis considering pardons for people accused of crimes on January 6 was an equally as important public-safety issue as armed robbery, rape, and murder.

One wonders what Newsom’s strategy was supposed to be; perhaps he was not expecting such toughly framed questions, but what kind of fool walks into a debate with Sean Hannity on Fox News live on air not expecting to get hit with all your state’s most damning statistics? He’s not going to a typically neutral (or, frankly, thumb-on-the-scale for the Democrats) moderator, and lying brazenly and trying to jaw over everyone, including Hannity, wasn’t going to sell. Maybe he was instead seeking to demonstrate to national Democrats how unafraid he is to walk into the lion’s den and just completely stick to talking points, no matter how much an honest man might otherwise want to flinch. After all, a moderator from NPR or NBC isn’t going to confront Newsom with uncomfortable facts in the same way, or call him on his more outrageous howlers. He succeeded in that, at least, but he lost not only on the merits (thumpingly), but on his stage presence and charisma as well.

His hair was immaculate.