Sorry, Gavin Newsom, But You Will Never Be My President
- john raymond
- 2 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Gavin Newsom can do good things. He can pass legislation that materially improves lives. He can appoint capable administrators. He can navigate budgets, manage crises, and deliver outcomes that, in isolation, deserve acknowledgment.
None of this is in dispute. The failure lies elsewhere.
True leadership is not measured by a ledger of achievements accumulated under favorable conditions; it is measured by behavior under pressure—when incentives run against principle, when appeasement is easier than clarity, and when power tempts a man to trade moral boundaries for tactical advantage.
The acid test of leadership is whether one refuses to legitimize what must not be legitimized, even when doing so carries personal or political cost. Newsom failed that test.
Knowing the left would eventually turn on him because he refuses to tax billionaires, Newsom chose not restraint but accommodation—not firmness but flirtation. He treats right-wing extremism as something to be managed rather than something to be confronted, mistaking exposure for engagement and engagement for courage. This is not a failure of intelligence or capacity; it is a failure of moral discipline.
History is unkind to such mistakes because they are always dressed up as pragmatism. Men like Newsom convince themselves they are broadening the conversation, lowering the temperature, or outmaneuvering their opponents. In reality, they are eroding the very norms that make leadership meaningful. Extremist ideas do not become safer when given daylight by powerful men; they become normalized. And normalization is not neutrality—it is complicity.
The people understand this instinctively, even when elites like Newsom pretend otherwise. They know that governance is not a performance and leadership is not a chess match played with values as expendable pieces. The real work of a democratic society is often dull, unglamorous, and stubbornly moral. It consists of saying no to money when saying yes would be easier; of holding lines rather than blurring them; of choosing the bland integrity of principled decisions over the intoxicating drama of the abyss.
That is why Newsom’s record of good deeds does not save him. Leadership is not the sum of what you accomplish when the winds are at your back. It is revealed in the moments when you are tempted to abandon moral clarity for survival—and choose not to.
And on that measure, Governor Newsom has failed, and failed miserably.