Newsom adds struggle to the story of a privileged political past

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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There is a well-worn playbook for politicians who long to occupy the White House. One of the most common tools is to write a book or order a book to introduce the presidential candidate to the voters.

Historians trace the practice back to Thomas Jefferson, whose 1785 book Notes on the State of Virginia preceded his first presidential campaign in 1786.

The use of the book as a conscious image-building tool, however, is a more recent phenomenon, prompting critic Jaime Fuller to lament the banality of such volumes in his 2019 Literary Hub Article.

“These modern election books sink into wet folklore. They’re boring,” Fuller writes.

“The current modern campaign book is in the form of memoirs, often ghostwritten, that try unsuccessfully to argue that a candidate had a reasonably American upbringing, despite the fact that it was that upbringing that made him want to be president,” he added.

That last comment pretty well describes the book in which the governor of California writes. Gavin Newsomthe name of, but ghostwritten by veteran California journalist Mark Arax. It will be published this month.

According to accounts from journalists who were given copies of “A Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” ahead of publication, Newsom’s autobiography deals with his life before he ran for governor. It is apparently aimed at softening or humanizing his longstanding image of social, financial and political benefit from his ties to the wealthy Getty family.

Newsom wants us – especially people in other states – to believe that his early life was a struggle to balance his patronage of billionaire Gordon Gettyachieved through his father’s long career as consigliore to the Getty family, his parents’ divorce, his mother’s financial problems and her suicide to end the misery of cancer.

“This is me taking the mask off,” Newsom said interview with Politico. “And it’s not just me taking off the mask and then disinfecting what’s underneath. It’s a careful examination of what’s underneath. It’s stress-testing it and trying to open it up more and more.”

Newsom’s account of his pre-governor life also touched on less salacious aspects, such as the breakup of his first marriage to Kimberly Guilfoyle — who was later briefly engaged to Donald Trump Jr. — as well as Newsom’s affair with the wife of a close friend and his admitted drinking problems.

“Is it any surprise that a Democrat considering a run for president would publish a book emphasizing that he didn’t have everything that was handed to him?” asks the New York Times in his article. “Of course not. Overcoming family difficulties has been a typical origin story for the last three Democratic presidents.”

Interestingly, Newsom’s book covers neither what he did as governor nor any manifesto for what the next president, presumably him, should do.

However, the Atlantic tries to fill in one of those topics — his governorship — in the latest of several recent op-eds on Newsom’s ambitions, titled “Gavin Newsom’s Record Is a Problem.”

“His new persona as a combative moderate, a Democrat in tune with the country’s changing desires and ruthless to the man at the top speaks eloquently to the needs of a party desperate to reclaim the White House.” Written by Mark Novikoff and Jonathan Chait.

“But Newsom has a problem: He’s been a California politician for decades and has been the state’s governor since 2019. During his tenure, the state has been a laboratory for some of the Democratic Party’s most politically charged policies and instincts, making him less accessible and more culturally radical than it has been. His record not only raises pressing questions about how effectively he could govern as president; it also provides opponents an endless buffet of vulnerabilities on social and economic issues.’

If Newsom wants to ride this roller coaster, he better hold on tight.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.