A recent podcast reveals in less than four minutes why he should never get within shouting distance of the White House

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently appeared on Ezra Klein’s podcast. As far as news goes, it’s a dog bites man story, as consequential as a leaf falling from a tree. A three minute 49 second clip is available on the New York Times’s opinion page, and trust me when I tell you even that is more than you want to watch, particularly if you’ve recently eaten. But in that brief clip Newsom reveals his utter superficiality and the depthless vapidity of what passes for his thought processes.

It starts with Newsom’s favorite game, Klein pretending not to know whether he’s going to run for president in 2028 and Newsom pretending like he hasn’t decided. I don’t know why he continues this ruse, except insofar as it keeps him in the news. Newsom’s song-and-dance also reveals a fundamental contradiction in the current Democratic Party: On one hand, the old guard, which includes the vast majority of party members and which Newsom represents, is desperate for leadership. While the party’s left flank is chock-a-block with (deranged) would-be standardbearers, like AOC, Zorhan Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and so forth, the majority center is lost in the woods.

It’s classic Newsom: When his party needs him, he’s too busy preening, playing politics and hogging the limelight to actually step up and lead. He’ll get around to it when it suits his ambitions. This is in keeping with his entire career. When California desperately needed leadership during the COVID pandemic, he was dining at the French Laundry and taking a multi-month swing through Republican states to taunt Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot. MSNBC (aka “MS NOW”) ate it up and delivered it on loop to their dozens of viewers. Meanwhile, 40 million Californians languished under some of the most draconian lockdowns not just in the country but in the world, crime surged, children lost years of education and socialization they’ll never get back and small businesses closed by the tens of thousands. Wildfires continued ravaging the state and the homelessness crisis continued spiraling out of control. But hey, Gav’s hair looked great, and his wife — excuse me, “First Partner” — provided a hell of a piece of arm candy. Take that, Ron and Greg!

It was the same sad story when he was mayor of San Francisco. As the city’s homelessness crisis exploded, as crime surged, as the downtown core struggled, he was busy getting drunk and shtupping his best friend’s wife. He was showing up drunk in a hospital emergency room for a photo op where a San Francisco police officer lay dying from a gunshot wound received in the line of duty. He was picking fights with the city’s beloved cable car operators.

Eat your heart out, Slick Willie.

And who could forget his cringe-inducing Bazaar photo spread with his then-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle at the Getty mansion in Pacific Heights? The title was, “The New Kennedys.” Yeesh. Pause for a moment and ponder the type of individual who thinks the picture below not only was a good idea, but made him look sexy and suave (also, is it just me, or does Kimberly appear to be trying to crawl away from Gavin?):

Maximum cringe mode, activated.

It’s no surprise then, that at a time when his party is throwing itself at his feet, he’s aloof, playing hard to get, preferring to enjoy all the attention that comes with being the leading “potential” candidate rather than rolling up his sleeves and doing the hard, unglamorous and risky work of being that leader. He sure as hell isn’t in charge of California — no one is these days, except the teachers’ unions, profiteering nonprofits and criminal cartels.

Meanwhile, as Californians grapple with myriad historic crises, from costs of living to homelessness, from crumbling infrastructure to failed public schools that routinely graduate hundreds of thousands of (overwhelmingly non-white) high school seniors who can barely read, write or reckon, among Newsom’s recent top priorities have been starting a podcast and writing an autobiography. The podcast is called “This is Gavin Newsom.” Seriously. While he has teams working on both projects, a podcast is a time suck, and a guy with his ego isn’t going to release a tome about himself without being deeply involved in every detail.

Despite the hundreds of hours he’s no doubt devoted to it, virtually no one listens to his podcast. Again, it’s typical Newsom: According to reports, while no one listens to it, a substantial percentage of politically engaged Americans are aware that it exists. Mission accomplished. All sizzle, no steak.

Newsom’s other newsworthy “accomplishment” has been to position himself as the Democrats’ foil to Donald Trump. He’s trolling Trump by copying Trump’s outrageous style and hyperbolic declarations. He’s even changed his official signature to look like Trump’s. While some loyalists find it invigorating, it’s actually kind of pathetic.

Back to his appearance on Klein’s podcast. After dispensing with the political Where’s Waldo, Klein asked Newsom an actually, sort of, almost meaningful question. Here’s the exchange:

Klein: The big political issue of the day is affordability —

Newsom (interrupting): Period.

Klein: Hey, shut up (kidding, he didn’t say that). California, on US News and World Report, on WalletHub, look at all these different rankings, it ranks 50th on affordability. These measures combine, housing costs and other costs of living. Why, and what is the affordability agenda that is credible coming from the Governor of California?

Newsom: It’s interesting. WalletHub also has the happiest city index. Five of the top ten —

Klein (interrupting): Look, man, I’ve got tattoos, and I got redwoods tattooed on my arm. And I grieve everyday I’m not in California. You don’t need to tell me it’s a happy place.

Newsom: In terms of taxes, which is interesting, WalletHub comes out with their annual survey, which says we’re slightly above average on taxes.Total mythology there. It’s the highest tax rate in the country, but not the highest taxes across the board when you add everything in.

This is, in a word, bonkers. Klein — as friendly a persona to Newsom as you’ll find — asks a direct question about arguably the most important issue not just in California, but in the country Newsom wants to lead. Rather than answer head-on, Newsom ducks and weaves like a penny ante political Floyd Mayweather, talking about happiness and taxes. He ends by claiming, with a straight face, that California doesn’t have a crushing tax burden. Which, of course, we do. That’s according to one of his own sources, WalletHub.

Also, unlike calculating tax burdens, which is a fairly straightforward exercise, WalletHub’s happiness rankings are about as scientific as the debate over who’s the greatest athlete of all time. It includes the flaming hellhole known as Oakland among its top 35 happiest cities. Suffice it to say, it is to be ingested with a large grain of salt. Yet that’s where Newsom stakes his flag.

Also, as an aside, can you imagine Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow or Barbara Walters bragging about their tattoos? Oh, how we’ve declined as a civilization.

After bloviating, Newsom switches to deflection. He tells Klein, “The affordability issue in California is real. It’s been the original sin going back decades and decades.”

Here we have another of Newsom’s favorite tactics: Blame history, and act like an innocent bystander. While it’s true that California home prices have historically been above the national average, that’s a highly misleading statistic. Coastal states with large metro cores have always been more expensive than the rest of the country, particularly in the post-World War II era, because their populations grew far faster than the rest of the country. That was in no small part because people from those other places were moving to those coastal states in droves. Housing was more expensive in California compared to the rest of the country because compared to the rest of the country more people wanted to live here. Newsom uses a tautology as an explanation, one that conveniently airbrushes his own responsibility.

He omits the most salient facts: Between 1950 and 2000, housing prices in California were close to the national average, spiking to around 15% higher during the early 1990s. As recently as 2010, after the subprime mortgage bubble burst, housing prices in California were about 10% above the national average. It’s only been since 2012 — the dawn of the Jerry Brown-Gavin Newsom era — that the state entered a period of sustained and extreme unaffordability. During that period, the state’s population grew by barely 5%, from 37.3 million to 39.1 million, but housing costs increased more than 100%.

Further expounding on the housing affordability crisis, Newsom tell Klein, “we haven’t gotten out of our own way. We haven’t produced enough housing stock. It’s Econ 101. Supply and demand. It’s not very complicated.”

Anyone who’s taken the first day of Econ 101 knows that the housing market is in fact enormously complicated, involving variables like location, environment, land costs, site preparation, building complexity, materials, labor, developer competency, insurance and capital costs and state and local regulations. Delays are common, caused by everything from weather to labor and materials shortages to breakdowns in the contractor-subcontractor chain. Because construction typically takes years, it’s also susceptible to macroeconomic fluctuations.

Another important factor, as I’ve written previously, is that housing is not fungible. Different cohorts of people demand different kinds of housing. A 1,200 square foot two bedroom apartment in an urban stack and pack is a profoundly different product than a 3,500 square foot three bedroom house in the suburbs. The more state policy incentivizes construction of a single type of housing that few people want — large multifamily apartment complexes — the more the cost of housing people do want — houses and town houses — goes up.

Newsom’s distillation isn’t just simplistic, it reveals a staggering lack of understanding. Unfortunately, Klein, co-author of “Abundance,” was never going to challenge his simplistic diagnosis. He’s totally on board the multifamily supply side train.

Newsom ends with another litany of excuses. California, you see, is, like, a super complex state, with 58 different counties, 478 cities and a bunch of regional councils of governments, all of which have a say in local housing. Never mind that Texas, which has been far more successful than California at spurring new housing construction and which Newsom cites in his rodomontade, has 254 counties and 1,225 municipalities and is geographically half again as big. Florida has 67 counties and 411 municipalities, about the same as California, and has also seen far more housing construction per capita.

It’s essential to understand that Newsom very likely believed everything he said to Klein, at least in the moment. Newsom’s only core conviction is his own exceptionalism. Everything else, up to and including human lives, is negotiable. His beliefs are vaporous, subject to the winds of convenience. He makes Bill Clinton look like the Dalai Lama.

All of this comes in a mere three minutes and 49 seconds. I defy anyone to find another politician or public figure who could cram as much ignorance, arrogance and mendacity into that short a frame. Newsom isn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but he’s a masterful bloviator. That’s all he is, all he’s ever been and all he ever will be. All of which is why, if the Democratic Party takes leave of its senses and nominates him as their presidential candidate in 2028, the United States can anticipate eight years of the J.D. Vance administration. You heard it here first.