California Gov. Gavin Newsom is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. He is a hyperpartisan hack in a time that demands statesmanship. He parrots antisemitic tropes at a time when Jews throughout the West are in more physical danger than at any time since before World War II.
He has about as much gravitas as a Rice Krispies Treat in a time that demands seriousness and deep thinking from our potential leaders.
“This is the most important geopolitical event since, at least, the September 11, 2001, attacks on America,” writes The Free Press’s Peter Savodnik. And “even though one need not support the way it is being fought, it demands a seriousness, a sobriety, a grown-up disposition that few Democrats seem capable of,” he adds.
The war with Iran could still turn out to be just an extended exercise in punishing the theocrats for their numerous transgressions. Continuing with a nuclear program, a ballistic missile program, murdering Americans, murdering their own people, enslaving women, arming and funding proxies to kill Israelis and roil the Middle East — seeing that they’re unable to hurt anyone with their warped and twisted ideology is a noble goal in and of itself.
But history demands something larger, more all-encompassing.
The current struggle, after all, is the unwinding of the war on the West: the terrorism, the fatwas, the covert alliance with al-Qaeda, the aiding and abetting of our military foes. It is a war against the war-makers. It is a war against the people who hate the Bill of Rights, literature, music, the rights of minorities, the rights of the individual, the people who provide the Chinese Communist Party with cheap oil, the people who want to co-opt Europe by way of demographics. Defeat is not an option, and this is not a “war of choice,” as Democratic senator Mark Warner, echoing foreign-policy “experts,” has lectured us. The war is an overdue response to the theocrats that, by now, they must have assumed we were not up to.
Indeed, the Iranians feel that as long as they can survive any attack by the U.S. and Israel, no matter how devastating, they will have won. Living to fight another day is their goal. And this is why, Trump and Netanyahu must steel themselves and end this nightmare regime once and for all. Otherwise, we’ll be repeating this exercise every few years.
Savodnik notes that Newsom “seems congenitally incapable of rising above his tribe and conceiving of the war as anything other than yet another opportunity for politicking, for taking a few shots, scoring some points.” That’s the definition of a lightweight.
Continuing with the Newsom-as-a-Rice Krispies Treat analogy, he looks solid, but it’s mostly air; it’s sticky, and it falls apart or loses its shape the moment any real pressure or heat is applied.
But for now, so many Democrats, including the man best positioned to be their presidential standard-bearer, cannot extricate themselves from the bowels of their hyper-partisanization. (Just to make sure everyone knows he’s on board with the faux-progressive groupthink, Newsom has also, of late, taken to accusing Israel of “apartheid.” And he’s agreed to an interview Thursday with a podcaster who calls Israel a “terrorist state.” Naturally.) They sound like adolescents pretending to be our representatives, very good at pointing out missteps or bad news, but incapable of articulating a moral vision. If they want to lead, they must run on a moral vision, and it cannot be “anything but Trump,” which is vague and vapid and disingenuous. How can we be sure that whomever the Democrats come up with isn’t worse?
Politics hasn’t “stopped at the water’s edge” for decades. But that doesn’t mean our leaders should parrot the arguments of people we’re at war with. Those are our men and women in harm’s way. Can’t Newsom have the common decency to keep his hyperpartisan trap shut about an “illegal war” until they return home, safe and sound?
That’s what a large man commenting on a world-altering situation might do.
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