Let\u2019s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address. \u201cIn Washington, the president believes that might makes right,\u201d pronounces California governor Gavin Newsom. \u201cSecret police, businesses raided, windows smashed, citizens detained, citizens shot, masked men snatching people in broad daylight\u2026.\u201d His tone is temperate, but the words echo through the State Capitol\u2019s Assembly chamber, the august backdrop for his speech. \u201cLining the pockets of the rich; crony capitalism at an unimaginable scale,\u201d he goes on. \u201cRolling back rights\u2026. Rewriting history.\u201d Newsom shakes his head, seeming more mournful than angry. Seeming, yes, presidential. \u201cNone of this is normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
It must drive Trump nuts. Newsom: lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque. Add to that his stunning wife and four adorable kids, and the executive strut of a self-made millionaire who has spent the past seven years at the helm of a state big, complex, and rich enough to be a nation of its own. Then there\u2019s the stuff Newsom has been doing. Forcing the president to backtrack on deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles. Parrying the GOP\u2019s Texas redistricting coup with Prop 50, the recently passed ballot measure that could flip up to five of California\u2019s House seats to the Democrats. Those tweets, or whatever they\u2019re called now: \u201cFOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA\u2019S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR (\u201cRATINGS KING\u201d) SAVING AMERICA \u2013 WHILE TRUMP CAN\u2019T EVEN CONQUER THE \u201cBIG\u201d STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE!!! \u2026THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. \u2013 GCN.\u201d There\u2019s a photo that does the online rounds now and then, a shot of the governor on the tarmac at LAX, aiming his finger at the president\u2019s chest. Bouncer body language, like, Hey buddy, not so fast. It has seemed at times, this past year, that the only thing standing athwart Donald Trump\u2019s will to power is Gavin Newsom. They make good foils: Both are masters of modern media; both, in their own way, know how to star in The Politics Show.<\/p>\n
Whatever you do, keep people talking. Commenting, forwarding, debating, dissecting. We\u2019re all part of the show, and it\u2019s always on. \u201cNewsom gets this,\u201d notes MS NOW All In host Chris Hayes, who writes about the warping of politics by the attention economy in his recent book The Sirens\u2019 Call. \u201cHe has a useful shamelessness in courting attention\u2014which is part of Trump\u2019s power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s latest conversation-starter is his new memoir, Young Man in a Hurry. It\u2019s not a manifesto, per se. You do come away with a hazy sense of Newsom\u2019s politics\u2014canny smudging, given his all-but-announced 2028 presidential run. The book sets him up as someone who fights, someone who dreams big, someone who sweats the details, someone with a desire to serve. These are not fixed ideological points; they leave room to maneuver. What the memoir mainly does is reassure you that Gavin Newsom is a person with frailties and failings. A man who had to search for himself. \u201cWhen language eludes you, identity eludes you, too. You start trying on costumes to see if they\u2019ll fit,\u201d he writes of his childhood struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia, one source of his confusion about who he was and where he fit in the world. Newsom became, by his own definition, a poser. Discussing the book, he paraphrases Oscar Wilde. \u201cWhat\u2019s the quote? \u2018First you pose, then.\u2026\u2019\u2005\u201d he shrugs demonstratively: Who knows? As in, who knows where you\u2019ll go once you\u2019ve peered behind your own mask. Which, in writing this book, Newsom says, is what he set out to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,30425,77599,77600,16603],"class_list":{"0":"post-159318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-magazine","12":"tag-onecolumn","13":"tag-storytypeprofile","14":"tag-textabovecenterfullbleed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}