By
Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday,
June 13, 2023
Who
among us has not enjoyed observing the perpetually grasping career of Gavin
Newsom as he doggedly shucks and slicks his way up to the top of California’s
greasy progressive pole? I’ll admit that I’m able to enjoy it more than some
because I don’t have to live in California. (Keep in mind: I live in Chicago,
Ill.) But Newsom is almost charmingly sleazy in his bearing and conduct, a true
visual throwback to a dearly missed Verhoeven Hollywood ’80s style of sinister
politician; it is amazingly easy to find images of California’s governor where
he looks like the
villain from every movie made from 1985–present.
Newsom,
with his telegenic bad-guy looks, is of course an easy guy to misunderstand. To
give him his fair due, he got to where he is the honest way: by working hard to
be born into an ultra-rich progressive family with deep ties to both the
Pelosis and the Getty Oil fortune. At the very least, you have to respect the
hustle. And hustling is exactly what Newsom has been doing every day since he
gained an entrée into California politics. If you think the leap from San
Francisco Parking Commissioner in 1996 to Board of Supervisors in 1998, mayor
in 2003, lieutenant governor in 2010, and governor in 2018 reflects a man in a
hurry, then you don’t even want to know what sorts of brutally ironic romantic wreckage he has also left in his wake.
The
reason any of this matters is that Newsom, sitting boredly atop his perch as
governor, is taking any interview he can and leaping with Pavlovian reflex at
any national publicity stunt to elevate his Q-rating in the transparent hope
that some act of God will take his own party’s incumbent president out of the
running. The visible impatience he displays as he holds his breath and waits
for Joe Biden to hurry up and die has now risen to comedic levels: Newsom was
already inherently oleaginous, but he now outright exudes ambition the way
other people sweatily expel toxins from their pores.
And it’s
downright charming how eagerly he’s waiting to swoop in from
the wings and save the Democratic Party (and also the world) from Kamala
Harris. In case you had missed it, just as the American public was asking
itself nothing at all about Gavin Newsom or his opinions on matters of great
national import, he strolled forward to loudly propose a 28th Amendment to the
Constitution (don’t even
bother clicking,
it’s just more predictable folderol about gun control). Why did he do it? Well,
because he just wanted you to keep him in your thoughts, please.
Even better, yesterday he
dropped in to Fox News to challenge Ron DeSantis to a live debate, on Fox, moderated by
Sean Hannity. Why Ron DeSantis, who is running a presidential campaign that
Gavin Newsom purportedly is not? Your guess is as good as mine. Why Fox News?
Why Hannity? I dunno. And why debate Gavin Newsom, of all people?
That
question? That one, I know the answer to, at least from Gavin Newsom’s
perspective. Newsom’s primary weakness — aside from his forever resembling a
corrupt OCP executive from Robocop — is his visible hunger for
a job he has no right to be asking for by the normal rules of the game. Even
with all of his slicked-back good looks, his overeagerness to be called on
often comes across more like Martin Prince than it does Dick Jones. I don’t know what to do if a Newsom candidacy
should come to pass on the Democratic side — other than suggesting that
Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr. start lawyering up — but I do know that
if it happens it will be more amusing than anything California’s entertainment
industry has (intentionally) generated in years.
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