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Frank Bruni
By Frank Bruni
Frank Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.
It’s remarkable how fixated Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom have been on each other. It’s weird. These two opposite-party governors from opposite coasts of the country have been sparring — repeatedly, haughtily, naughtily — for more than two years. If their debate on Thursday night had been the climactic scene in a Hollywood rom-com, Newsom would have left his lectern, marched purposefully over to DeSantis, cut him off mid-insult and swept him into his arms, the tension between them revealed as equal parts ideological and erotic.
That, alas, was not how the event played out. While I occasionally detected a spark in each man’s eyes — cocksure recognizes cocksure and has a grudging respect for it — I more often winced at the strychnine in their voices. Their loathing is sincere. It was there at the start of the debate, when DeSantis, in the first minute of his remarks, managed to mention Newsom’s infamously hypocritical pandemic dinner at the French Laundry. It was there in the middle, when DeSantis brought up the French Laundry again.
And, oh, how it was there in Newsom’s wicked mockery of DeSantis’s plummeting promise as a presidential candidate. He noted that he and DeSantis had something “in common,” alluding to the fact that he himself is not making a White House bid. “Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”
Newsom didn’t stop there, later saying that DeSantis was pathetically trying to “out-Trump Trump.” “By the way,” he quickly added, “how is that going for you, Ron? You’re down 41 points in your own home state.” And later still, for good measure: “When are you going to drop out and at least give Nikki Haley a shot to take down Donald Trump and this nomination?”
Soon, I hope. But that didn’t mean the question was a good look for Newsom — or a good look for America.
That was my problem with the Florida and California governors, as well as their face-off, which took place on a stage in Alpharetta, Ga., and was moderated by Sean Hannity and televised live by Fox News. While the gov-on-gov action was billed as a battle of red-state and blue-state worldviews and governing agendas, of the Republican way and the Democratic way, it became even more of a mirror of just how little quarter each side will give the other, how little grace it will show, how spectacularly it fails at constructive and civil dialogue, how profoundly and quickly it descends into pettiness.
There was substance, yes — more than at the three Republican presidential debates — but it wasn’t broached honestly and maturely. It was instead an opportunity for selective statistics, flamboyant evasions, quipping, posturing. Each of these self-regarding pols kept altering the angle of his stance, shifting the altitude of his chin, changing his smile from caustic to complacent. It was as if they were rearranging their egos.
And the dishonesty extended to Hannity, who front-loaded and stacked the roughly 90 minutes with Republicans’ favorite talking points and their preferred attacks on President Biden. There wasn’t a whisper from Hannity about abortion or DeSantis’s support of a six-week ban until 65 minutes into the event, nor did Hannity press the two candidates on matters of democracy, on the rioting of Jan. 6, 2021, on Trump’s attacks on invaluable American institutions, on his flouting of the rule of law.
Those issues have immeasurable importance, but they took a back seat to border security, crime, tax rates and Americans’ movement to red states from blue ones. Fox News’s real agenda was to make Newsom’s defense of the Biden administration look like a lost cause. The cable network failed to do so, because Newsom is too forceful a brawler and too nimble a dancer to let that happen.
He persuasively described DeSantis as the personification of right-wing, red-state stinginess and spitefulness. DeSantis punishingly cast Newsom as left-wing, blue-state profligacy in the flesh. One exchange late in the debate perfectly captured that dynamic.
Feigning charitableness, DeSantis acknowledged: “California does have freedoms that some people don’t, that other states don’t. You have the freedom to defecate in public in California. You have the freedom to pitch a tent on Sunset Boulevard. You have the freedom to create a homeless encampment under a freeway and even light it on fire.” His litany went on.
Newsom exuberantly countered it. “I love the rant on freedom,” he said sarcastically. “I mean, here’s a guy who’s criminalizing teachers, criminalizing doctors, criminalizing librarians and criminalizing women who seek their reproductive care.” All excellent points and all reasons, beyond the kinder climate, that I’d pilot my U-Haul toward California before Florida.
But neither of the two governors left his analysis there. Just seconds later, they were trading taunts and talking over each other, as they had the whole night, during which each called the other a liar or something akin to it dozens of times.
“You’re nothing but a bully,” Newsom said, switching up the slurs.
“You’re a bully,” DeSantis shot back. I braced for an “I’m rubber, you’re glue” coda. In its place, I got the indelible image of DeSantis holding up a map that apparently charted the density of human feces in various areas of San Francisco.
Neither of them won the debate. Haley did, because nothing about DeSantis’s screechy performance is likely to reverse her recent ascent into a sort of second-place tie with him in the Republican primary contest. Gretchen Whitmer did, because Newsom’s pungent smugness no doubt made many viewers more curious about the Michigan governor than about him as a Democratic prospect in 2028.
By agreeing to this grim encounter, Newsom and DeSantis implicitly presented themselves as de facto leaders of their respective parties, with a relative youthfulness — Newsom is 56, and DeSantis is 45 — that distinguishes them from the actual leaders of their parties: Biden, 81, and Trump, 77.
But leadership wasn’t what they displayed, and what they modeled was the boastful, belligerent manner in which most political disagreements are hashed out these days, an approach that yields more heat than light. “We have never been this divided,” Hannity proclaimed at the start, referring to the country, and just about every subsequent minute exhaustingly and depressingly bore out that assessment.
The scariest part of all was when Hannity raised the possibility of extending the event by half an hour. The disagreeable governors agreed, proving that they had two other things in common: an appetite for attention and an itch to squabble.
And the happiest part? When Hannity didn’t follow through on that threat. We’d all witnessed squabbling enough.
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Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram • Threads • @FrankBruni • Facebook
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