If you vote for Gavin Newsom for president, what do you get?
If you find out, tell him. He would love to know.
The Democrat governor of California recently had occasion to explain what to expect if he entered the Oval Office on January 20, 2029.
Alas for Newsom, his not-ready-for-primetime response recalled other politicians who had no clue why they ran for office.
In Michael Ritchie’s film The Candidate, Bill McKay (the great, recently late Robert Redford) wins a U.S. Senate seat. On Election Night, he is adrift. He is a victorious, albeit empty, vessel. He hides from his adoring crowd just long enough to corner his campaign manager (Peter Boyle) and plead: “What do we do now?”
NBC News anchor Roger Mudd tossed U.S. Senator Edward Moore Kennedy the softest of underhand softballs in a November 4, 1979, interview. The Massachusetts Democrat swung, missed, and spun himself onto the ground — as if undone by an Aroldis Chapman fastball.
Mudd asked: “Why do you want to be president?”
“Well, were I to make the announcement to run, the reasons that I would run is [sic] because I have a great belief in this country. That it is — There’s [sic] more natural resources than any nation of the world. It has the greatest educated population in the world, the greatest technology of any country in the world, the greatest capacity for innovation in the world, and the greatest political system in the world,” Kennedy meandered.
After rambling for another 70 seconds, he concluded: “I would basically feel that it’s imperative for this country to either move forward — that it can’t stand still — or otherwise it moves backward.”
On paper, Kennedy’s words are as bland and uninspiring as boiled cauliflower. Add the audio of his Uhs and Ums, plus the video of Kennedy’s tilted head and shifty eyes. The result? A confidence-crushing two minutes and 20 seconds of devastating television.
Believe it or not, the fictional McKay and the non-fiction Kennedy were one-man think tanks compared to the metric ton of greenhouse gas that Newsom embodied while laboring to explain his aspirations if elected president.
Newsom appeared on the March 4, 2026, Adam Friedland Show, in part, to promote his new book, Young Man in a Hurry. Their conversation is worth quoting at length.
“Like, what is your defined political project?” Friedland asked one hour and five minutes into his podcast. “Like, throughout your career and right now, what is the thing you want to accomplish, like, politically?”
Newsom: “I don’t have, like, a brand. I don’t have a tag — ‘Make America Great,’ or the ‘Great Society,’ or something like ‘Medicare for All’ or, you know, ‘tax the billionaires.’
“But I, you know, for me — no b******t — it’s just standing up for ideals, striking out against injustice. That defines my ‘Why’ in every way, shape, or form. Stand up for ideals, strike out against injustice.
“I’m a Sargent Shriver Democrat. I’m into that whole ’60s, the vernacular of the ’60s, solving for ignorance and poverty and disease, and the spirit of the ’60s, and the spirit of King, and, you know, the non-violent movement, and Gandhi, and, you know, Havel, and, you know, Mandela — that whole set of moral authority, that whole space. That’s the Zeitgeist.
“And, so, that’s me. That’s my dad. That’s my mom. That’s the book, and that’s my ‘Why.’ And, so, standing up for ideals is what gay marriage was about. The work I’m doing right now — sort of push back. You know, we can lose this country. And just feeling like I have to be held to account and strike out against the injustices of the day.”
Newsom simultaneously displayed extravagant hand gestures, like a coked-up sign-language interpreter.
Friedland tried again. “So, if you had to define it — like.”
Newsom: “You tell me. You’re better at this.”
Friedland: “I don’t know. I don’t know who —”
Newsom: “I mean, I just gave you my ‘Why,’ but how do you translate that into — human?”
Friedland: “What?” he asks, obviously baffled. “So, if you, say, make an appeal to a voter, right? Say, ‘If you vote for me, you get X.’ Like, what — in a kind of concise, tangible sense — talking to a regular guy. What is that offer?”
Newsom: “Yeah. No. I’ve struggled with being able to communicate. I told you what my ‘Why’ is, and why I’m here, and I mean that. And that’s ingrained in every aspect of my life, and it connects a dot, even in my private life, in terms of the business things.
“I’ve done stupid things like screw-cap wines and selling wine at retail, just in restaurants, trying to, sort of, break up monopolies and try to strike out against the injustice, the rigging of the system, etc.”
“And it’s part of — you know — all the iterations.”
Friedland: “What is screw-cap wine? What is that?”
Newsom: “I’ve seen that, how we’re going back, but that’s in the book. You’ve got to buy the book.”
Mel Brooks’ comedy masterpiece, Blazing Saddles, pioneered a term for such incoherence: “Authentic frontier gibberish.”
Newsom seems to be channeling Nicholas Fehn, an alleged “political comedian” brilliantly portrayed by Fred Armisen on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Here, from November 7, 2009 (Season 35), Fehn simply cannot connect even two thoughts.
“If we were to examine the motorcycle industry in the Midwest, the first thing that people would — the reminder — the one alarm clock when it comes to, say, the Inuits, the way they treat the sick and elderly, they’re not, I wouldn’t assume. I wouldn’t even guess at how many times. I would. If one were to design a uniform for tour guides.”
Newsom makes one pine for the display-case-like clarity of New York City’s Communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Love him or hate him, every New Yorker could recite Mamdani’s agenda, without notes, within a fortnight after he secured the Democrat primary. Mamdani repeatedly and transparently promised “fast and free buses,” free child care, government-owned grocery stores, a rent freeze, a tax hike of “2 percent” (actually, from 3.9 percent to 5.9 percent, up 52 percent) on million-dollar-plus filers, and tall, twin pillars of social justice and Islamic sensitivity.
This is not my cup of tea, nor was it that of the 49.2 percent of voters who opposed Mamdani. And now he is stumbling as he tries to fulfill these impossible dreams.
Nonetheless, Mamdani had the good taste to present his public-policy vision —constantly, consistently, and concretely. New Yorkers are surprised by little that he does. Mamdani switched on the Left-turn signal and pointed the warm, collective Yellow Cab in that direction. And away we went!
Newsom cannot even do this. To call his comments vacuous is an insult to vacuums. The inside of a light bulb has more weight than what he sputtered to Friedland. Chances are, the ghost of Werner Heisenberg would have trouble locating even a particle of substance in the governor of California’s comments.
Gavin Newsom’s constituents at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory should study him and his “statements” with great care. His unbearable lightness surely qualifies as anti-matter.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.