On Thursday night, Fox News aired a debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, moderated by Fox’s celebrity MAGA-man Sean Hannity. When they weren’t simply trading well-rehearsed insults, the two men discussed COVID policies, crime, cost-and-quality-of-life comparisons of their two states, and national economic conditions.
Takes on the encounter were generally negative, regardless of the partisan or geographical allegiances of viewers, typified by this comment from Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian:
Twenty minutes in … I had a headache. There was so much cross-talk and interrupting — by both governors — that it was impossible to hear what they were saying.
If a third debater had been onstage, they almost certainly would have piped up, “See folks, this is why those two should not be on this debate stage.”
Indeed, Hannity was in the wildly unfamiliar position of being the “adult in the room.” But now even more than before the “debate,” the question must be asked: Why did it happen?
It should be remembered that the whole stunt began way back in August of 2022 with a suggestion from retired newsman Dan Rather that Newsom soon embraced:
This taunt was issued well before DeSantis was clearly running for president and also before Newsom was clearly not running for president. The two pols were, however, well into their habitual pattern of trolling each other and their states as cultural and political stereotypes. And the venue for the proposed Tilt-A-Whirl migrated from Rather’s idea of CNN to Fox News, in part because Newsom had developed something of a friendly (if unlikely) relationship with Hannity.
DeSantis did not accept the challenge until August of 2023, and his motives were exceptionally easy to understand: The Floridian was in the midst of an epic collapse of support in his challenge to Donald Trump, a trend that has continued in the ensuing months. A debate with Newsom from the place MAGA conservatives consider an unmitigated hellscape was a rare opportunity for DeSantis to regain his lost position as the God-appointed scourge of Woke America, smiting teachers, librarians, and LGBTQ+ folk. Besides, Trump refused to debate DeSantis, so out-Trumping Trump in an encounter with a mutual enemy had to suffice.
But Newsom’s motives in participating in this highly contrived event are a bit harder to divine. Once the debate was agreed upon, Newsom had to do something to deal with the widespread media assumption that his tongue is lolling out for a chance to run for president. Predictably, he went out of his way to claim he was acting as a surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket, though it’s doubtful that the White House views Ron DeSantis as anything other than a useful irritant to Trump. Newsom’s I’m-not-running claims, however, did set up his best line of the debate: “There is one thing that we have in common … Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”
The DeSantis-Newsom-Hannity whirligig will probably be soon forgotten; you have to figure if it benefited anyone it might be DeSantis given the likely viewership of any Hannity event on Fox News. Newsom would be wise now to spend more time focused on his own state’s problems than on defending its virtues and honor in contrast to the reptile-and-insect-infested right-wing paradise that is home to both DeSantis and Trump. A recent UC Berkeley IGS/Los Angeles Times survey showed Newsom’s job approval ratio hitting a new low (44 percent approval to 49 percent disapproval) despite California’s strong Democratic leanings. It’s not clear he has any political capital to loan to Biden and Harris. But his future sure does look brighter than that of Ron DeSantis, who is trudging through rural Iowa in a long-shot effort to salvage his once-powerful presidential campaign.
Perhaps Newsom is positioning himself to launch his own presidential bid in 2028. To most of us that seems a long way into a potentially chaotic future. But most people who see a future president of the United States in the mirror each day are eager for the chance to convince the country to share that vision.
