Why did they do it? What was the angle?
A presidential candidate such as Ron DeSantis usually would never waste an evening only weeks before the make-or-break early primaries debating a telegenic noncompetitor for a TV pseudo-event. Yet there was DeSantis onstage in Georgia, creating content for Fox News, opposite Gavin Newsom, the sharp-tongued California governor who has publicly ridiculed DeSantis for months.
For the Democrat Newsom, the angle is pretty straightforward. He’s a presidential aspirant trying to elbow his way past a serving vice president to establish himself as his party’s heir apparent to the 81-year-old incumbent. Newsom accepted the Fox invitation with one simple plan: to create video moments on unfriendly ground that would cause loyal Democrats to think, We want this guy to fight for us. That thought probably won’t do him any good in the current cycle, when Democrats will surely renominate Joe Biden barring some catastrophic health event. But it could do Newsom a lot of good in future cycles—especially if the Biden-Harris ticket should lose in 2024.
For Fox News, the angle is obvious too. People might watch, which is good for business. Whether people watched or not, Fox could redeem lost credibility as a news organization by operating a surprisingly responsible evening of informational programming. In the debate’s opening segments, the moderator, Sean Hannity, stressed again and again that his questions would be fact-based—like a proud host informing his guests that tonight he will serve the expensive wine. And indeed the questions, if sometimes ideologically loaded, were substantive. Charts appeared on-screen citing statistics from the CDC and other reputable sources that were treated for once as authorities and not sinister outposts of the dreaded “deep state.” You’d never imagine that this network had only six months ago paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit arising from its hallucinatory falsehoods.
The mystery pertained to the third participant, DeSantis. What did he have to gain? The Florida governor is in the final stages of a faltering presidential run. His far-and-away front-running opponent for the Republican nomination is former President Donald Trump. DeSantis’s nearest rival is former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is drawing donor money and media attention as the new likely runner-up. Why would DeSantis waste time and energy squabbling on TV with someone who is not running for anything this cycle? DeSantis’s contest is here and now, against Trump and Haley, not Newsom. If DeSantis loses against Trump, whom he once tied in Republican polls and whom he was earlier out-fundraising, there will be no political future for him.
Even if DeSantis had done well against Newsom, how would that help him with any of his urgent difficulties?
And, of course, DeSantis did not do well. He is well informed and well prepared, but he’s just not as mentally nimble as Newsom, not as natural a television performer. He loses his composure easily. If he does not know those truths about himself, his advisers must. So again, why?
The best answer, it seems to me, comes from the ancient Spanish sport of bullfighting. The bull is goaded and wounded to a point where it is half-crazed. The matador unfurls a small red cape. If the bull could reason, it would understand that the cape is a lure into a trap. But the bull cannot reason. It can only feel: fear and pain and rage. It charges the cape, meeting only air, wasting its strength. It charges again and again, losing blood and speed at each pass, until finally the matador puts a sword between its shoulder blades.
DeSantis is that bull. He has been losing the 2024 Republican nomination contest at enormous expense. His mood, never sunny, seems frustrated and angry. His campaign strategy inhibits him from confronting Trump. Taking on Haley has proved counterproductive. Yet he feels a primal need to fight somebody, anybody, while he still can, if only to release some of the disappointment and resentment of his year-long political decline. And there’s Newsom, teasing and vexing him like a horse-mounted picador, in a prequel contest to the matador’s final coup de grâce. Of course, DeSantis shouldn’t lunge at him. But he must lunge at somebody.
In the governors’ long encounter last night, DeSantis had some good points to make. California really did harm its children’s education by keeping schools closed for so long during the coronavirus pandemic. The state truly does suffer from a homelessness and public-order crisis that Florida does not. Yet DeSantis could not make his points deftly and effectively. He fulminated noisily about “lies” and “false narratives” when Newsom spoke, interrupting to vent his own anger rather than to connect with his audience.
If you watch a lot of Fox News, you might recall that Newsom in November 2020 attended a fancy dinner at the French Laundry, an upscale restaurant, at a time when many other California businesses were locked down. But if you didn’t remember that story, you would be puzzled by what DeSantis was talking about when he repeated sneering references to a “French laundry.” Is that supposed to be where Newsom sends his shirts? Plainly, it was a jibe that a seething DeSantis had long wanted to cast in Newsom’s face. If the dig baffled viewers, that did not apparently matter to DeSantis. This was personal; this was for him.
For Newsom, the evening on Fox provided an opportunity to insert himself into a presidential race that otherwise might bypass him. He had a purpose and reason behind his long and ardent courtship of Hannity.
Unlike Newsom, DeSantis did not seem to have a plan for the debate. He was there because he psychically needed to be there, to get some things off his chest. Even so, DeSantis hardly appeared to enjoy himself. His habitual dark mood seemed to grow darker over the course of the night. Perhaps he got at least some satisfaction from the experience, the release that comes from kicking back at the rock you stubbed your toe on. The kick was maybe not a smart decision. The foot hurts worse than ever and the rock does not care at all, but at least the kicker did something to retaliate and loose his grievances upon a hostile world.
Today, DeSantis returns to the joyless task of campaigning. His early advantages in money and media attention have dwindled. He is left to meet individual human voters who seem not to like him much, and whose dislike he seems amply to return. If his bid for the Republican nomination fails, as seems now almost certain, then he must return to the even more disagreeable task of managing state agencies and inventing some kind of enduring policy legacy.
He’ll have his grievances to keep him company, and after last night, the grudge against Gavin Newsom may rise toward the top of the list. The rage is misplaced; although Newsom tormented and maddened DeSantis onstage, it will not be Newsom who delivers the matador’s death blow. That finale awaits the voters of the early-primary states.
All that happened last night was much angry huffing, snorting, and pawing. The final collapse into the sand of the arena comes early next year.