The Ridiculous Roadshow of Gavin Newsom

Victor Davis Hanson
Historian’s Corner

The California governor, on the scent of a progressive effort to ensure Joe Biden does not run in 2024, is touring the country. Oddly, he talks of a “free” California, as he tries to contrast his record with the terms of Texas governor Greg Abbott and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The subtext is that he can make America look like California. But who would wish to live in such a nightmare? What makes California viable is that people can leave it. But if America were California, where would one go?

Newsom is an absurdity for a variety of reasons:

1) If California was both free and preferable to either Florida or Texas, why then are millions of Californians leaving their birthplace to head for Florida, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and other red-states antithetical to California?

2) What are the data Newsom is using to contrast his state with others, and persuade that his state is a model for the nation other than a complete and utter disaster?

a) Schools? California public school test scores rank in the bottom tenth percentile nationwide. Anyone who has taught at a California State University campus between 1984 and 2004 can attest to the rapid decline of student achievement, the watering down of courses, and the growing student loan debt of the enrolled.

b) Infrastructure? Most surveys rate California in the bottom ten of states, based on their infrastructure. California’s Central Valley 99 “freeway” in terms of miles driven per year is the most dangerous road in America. The 101 is a relic from the 1950s, and resembles unchanged scenes right out of Vertigo, some 60 years ago when the population was over 20 million fewer.

c) Crime? Newsom’s home San Francisco suffers from the highest per capita property crime rate in the nation. It has become the iconic city for thieves simply walking unimpeded out of stores with someone else’s “stuff.” Is the message, “I will make America look like San Francisco in 2022?”

d) Homelessness? California hosts somewhere between 35-45 percent of the nation’s homeless. Downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles resembles scenes out of Old Cairo or Calcutta in the 1960s. I take that back: I went to old Cairo at 20 in 1973 and the homeless and beggars there on the streets did not openly defecate and urinate in the street.

e) Taxes? Is Newsom’s message, I can ensure that just as California has the nation’s highest income taxes and gas taxes, so too will America have the world’s highest?

f) Cost of Living? Does Newsom barnstorm the nation to assure them California has the highest gas and electricity prices in the continental United States? Or that homes sell statewide on average at the highest cost per square foot of any state? Is that part of Newsom’s “freedom” message—we can make your car, house, and appurtenances the most expensive in the union?

g) One-party state? Is Newsom selling the country on the possibilities that can occur should the Democrats gain a monopoly on power as in California, where there is no statewide Republican office-older, supermajorities in both legislatures, and only 11 Republicans in the state’s 53 congressional seats? Is that why Newsom believes his state is now better governed than in the old days of Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson?

h) Is Newsom showcasing the effective government of his state—how it handles its annual devastating summer wildfires by allowing the drought-stricken forests to rot and crumble, kept safe from those awful timber companies that ask to harvest the dead wood and clean the forests of debris? Or is the model his leadership during the drought, marked by farseeing efforts to refuse to build more water storage, both subterranean and surface? Or is the California power grid the nation’s model, which when it does not spark and ignite forest fires, tends to sputter out in August?

So, what is Newsom’s strategy? That he is as young as Biden is infirm, as sure of his ignorance as Biden is unsure of everything? Is he as hypocritical in violating his own statutes as is Biden?

Newsom has variously promised that the lockdowns would lead to a more “progressive” capitalism”—in the manner that he is tardy in paying his own property taxes on multimillion-dollar properties? Does he radiate leadership and courage in enacting the strictest lockdown among fifty states—that were not applicable to him as he snuck out unmasked to one of the state’s most expensive restaurants, the French Laundry?

So, what is the there there? If Newsom had any integrity, he would tour the country and announce, elect me President and I promise to do for you the exact opposite of what I did for California?