America deserves better options than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Thursday night, Fox News viewers got a peek at one of the alternative choices: Ron DeSantis, the conservative governor of Florida and Republican presidential candidate, and Gavin Newsom, the progressive governor of California and obvious presidential aspirant. Sean Hannity did a public service by arranging and hosting the debate, avoiding gimmick questions, and covering a broad range of issues.
The 45-year-old DeSantis and the 56-year-old Newsom are vigorous and articulate spokesmen for their states’ and their parties’ divergent approaches to governance and civil society. Both men are fresh from reelection a year ago. DeSantis, in 2022, won the largest victory for a Republican gubernatorial candidate in the state’s history. Newsom, in 2021, became the first California governor to survive a recall. Each won nearly 60 percent of their state’s vote in 2022.
The debate showed what civil discourse in a democracy can be: rough, but serious. While both men accused one another of lies, bullying, and hypocrisy in their public duties, the debate was conducted entirely on the basis of public policy and statesmanship rather than corruption, criminality, senility, or other personal sins. Newsom even graciously complimented DeSantis for his family and his military service. Counter-charges of lying to the audience are preferable to speakers talking past one another or shouting each other down. We remind readers that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were often raw and far from elevated. What mattered was that they drew the stakes for all to see.
Whether or not the debate helps DeSantis’s presidential campaign with some of its recent doldrums, it showcased what made him an attractive presidential prospect. He was prepared and relentless, hammering Newsom on the population drain out of California and into Florida and on policy differences such as the contrast between the two states’ approaches to Covid lockdowns and on high California gas prices and taxes. He called out Newsom for only cleaning up feces on San Francisco streets when Xi Jinping came to town. DeSantis hit all the highlights of his own governing record, and there are many. At a time when the right to life seems out of fashion, he passionately defended a culture in which every life is valued.
Newsom had a harder task, facing off against both DeSantis and Hannity, as well as trying to simultaneously tout Joe Biden’s record and carry water for DeSantis’s primary opponents. So, while Newsom got off a few riffs that should play well with his base, he was often in the unenviable position of preposterously hitting DeSantis from the right (such as calling him a “lockdown governor” and accusing him of supporting “amnesty”) while giving Joe Biden an “A” grade as president and claiming that the aging president was doing just fine. Hannity boxed Newsom into all but admitting that he would oppose any restrictions on abortion at any time. Newsom was frequently left to reel off falsehoods to defend his own or Biden’s record, such as claiming that there were actually more Floridians moving to California than vice versa (this was an innumerate media error debunked some time ago).
We credit Newsom for moral clarity on the need to destroy Hamas without apology. And we applaud him for going on hostile turf to make his case. But in the contest between the Florida model of Ron DeSantis and the California model of Gavin Newsom, well, it’s no contest at all.