Riders On The Storm

>> Jonathan Movroydis: It's Thursday, August 24, 2023, and you are listening to matters of policy and politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balanced power here in America and around the free world. I'm Jonathan Movroydis, a senior writer at the Hoover Institution. And I'm sitting in the chair of Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbes Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism, so that he can answer questions and provide commentary about California policy and politics in which he's well versed.

Bill Whalen, in addition to being a Washington Post columnist, writes weekly for Hoover's California on your mind web channel. Whalen is joined today by Leo Hanian Hoover Institution senior fellow and professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in macroeconomics research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hanian also writes weekly about the policy environment of the Golden State for California on your mind. Good day, gentlemen. Let's talk about the latest developments in policy and politics in the Golden State. Lee let's begin by talking about the big California story of the past weekend, and that is the arrival and departure of Tropical Storm Hillary, a category four hurricane.

This is the first tropical storm to hit California in the last 84 years. According to the National Weather Services Los Angeles office. Virtually all daily rainfall records were broken, and the storm dumped more than half the average annual rain on some desert and mountain areas, including palm springs.

The reports of flooding and tens of thousands of people across southern California were left without power. On top of everything else, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake occurred near Ojai, 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Brian Ferguson, deputy director of the California governor's Office of Emergency Services, said, quote, having multiple, complex, overlapping disasters is something that we've had at multiple times in recent years.

And unfortunately, our state has had the opportunity to get pretty good at this work. Lee, I'd like to start off with you. What is your assessment of how the state mitigates disasters such as these? Were we adequately prepared this time?

>> Lee Ohanian: Well, Jonathan, the state has not done a very good job from the standpoint of making the investments that are necessary to protect people on their property from this type of damage.

If we go back just a few months to the record storms that California experienced in the winter months, December, January, February, up through March, the storm drainage and mitigation of debris flows and mudslides is so bad that we racked up perhaps as much as $40 billion worth of damage, and I think probably 25 to 30 people lost their lives.

And those numbers just, of course, are just unacceptable. Most of our storm drainage dates back to the 1940s and most of our levees and dams dates back to before 1970s. So it just is, it's insane in a state that spends $300 billion a year in terms of overall budget, that just, no, not even close to what's necessary is allocated to protecting people on their property.

In this particular case with Hillary, the damage was fairly nearly focused, unfortunately, through the La area and some populated areas. Others, for example, I live in Santa Barbara. We had a quarter of an inch of rain. We're not hit so hard. But this is, again, an area that is simply not budgeted.

It hasn't been budgeted for years. And Governor Newsom traveled down to southern California as, I think, more of a show of political goodwill, really, than anything else. Every time a disaster type of event comes to California, weathers or rainstorm weather's fire season, and we haven't thinned out fuel areas.

We just haven't done our homework. And this is something that really, if it's not addressed, we're gonna continue to suffer multibillion dollar losses and dozens of people lose their live seats in these events.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I want to ask Lee a couple questions about how economically this could have really messed up California.

But first, let me make this observation. I hope I don't come across it too crusty here, but Jonathan, you noted that the OES director tossed around the word disaster. I don't think a storm like this in California, again, I don't want to go lightly anybody who's inconvenienced by this, but I don't see the storm necessarily as a disaster.

And I don't see the earthquake in Ojai the same. I think when I think disaster, I think the Northridge earthquake in 1980, 1994, I think Loma Prieta quake in 1989, I think the terrible mudslides in Bonacito not too far from where Leo lives. This actually has kind of made California a bit of a laughingstock, especially on social media.

You see on Instagram these memes flying around. And what they show, Lee and Jonathan, are pictures of this cheap plastic patio furniture in a backyard. And one of the cheap little chairs has been toppled over. And under the hash bag it says, California, we will rebuild. In other words, people are kind of, kind of mocking the fact that this storm was approaching California.

And, yes, it was a category form storm four storm at one time. It was not a cat four hurricane by the time it reached California, though. But yeah, California's went crazy and panicked about this. People curled up in their fetal positions. And it just, to me, it shows just how different we are on the west coast from the east coast.

I spend my summers in South Carolina, which is obviously hurricane country. And when storms come, they brace for it. But they also kind of, you know, revel in it, if you will. They have hurricane parties. Some idiots go out and surf in the ocean during the storm, but they just don't kind of whimper and cry and whine about their fortunes.

So anyway, sorry, end of rant here. But here's the question, Lee. I think what this storm did show is the potential for how fragile, not just mentally, emotionally fragile California's can be, but how fragile our existence is in this regard. Lee, what happened if the storm had really wreaked havoc upon those five oil refineries in southern California, which collectively produce about a million barrels of oil, what would have happened to the driving assistance in California Leo, what would have happened to the price of gasoline?

Thinking things that politicians have their fingers on the pulse. But secondly, Lee, you can say, okay, fine, that's an argument for getting us off of gasoline. What if we become an all electric society? We're not just our homes and our kitchens are fueled by electricity, but our cars as well.

What happens if this big storm comes in and shuts down the grid? So, Lee, what are your thoughts?

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, well, Bill, in terms of energy, in particular, gasoline, California's on average spend about 40% percent more per gallon of gasoline than the average in the country.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, my local shell station, I drove by there yesterday, 529 for the cheap stuff, 579 for the good stuff.

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, so, Bill, that's really, that's right at the, that's right at the spot that AAA has pegged California gas prices this week, 529 for the 87, 579 for the 91. The national average is 387. So California is about 40% more expensive for gasoline. That obviously hits low income households, particularly those who live in relatively more affordable areas and drive a long ways to their jobs.

It hits them much harder than others. And California is extremely vulnerable to these kinds of disruptions, which is another reason why California should really be insured by having appropriate infrastructure available to try to prevent these types of events. We're playing Russian roulette because, Bill, if those refineries were shut down, we are SOL to give an acronym for what we're talking about here, because our gasoline is not consumed elsewhere in the United States.

We would have to get it from South Korea. That's where we would need to get it. So a lot of transportation will come to a standstill. And that's, of course, just completely unacceptable. There's just no reason for that to happen. So if we're going to make life so difficult for gasoline producers in the state, I don't think, Bill, you may know this better than me, I don't think a new refinery has been built from scratch in the states since the 80s.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Correct It's those 80s, I think.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, the old ones have been retrofitted, but the reason it's so expensive is because we don't have adequate supply, so it would have been a nightmare. And our electric grid is vulnerable because there's been such a big push for solar and wind.

And we, despite 50 years of investing in solar and wind technology, we still haven't solved the problem of storing solar and wind power so that it can be used when the sun goes down or when the wind's not blowing. So we've had an awful lot of brownouts and blackouts and energy electricity disruptions in recent years, because when electric grid operators transition from solar to natural gas, which occurs around 05:00 P.M, 06:00 P.M depending on the time of day.

04:00 P.M in the winter, they have to do a very delicate dance to try to balance the fact that the renewables are going away. They've got to get the natural gas back online, but that's happening exactly when household demand is skyrocketing. So people come home from work and they start making dinner and they start doing laundry.

And again, this puts us in a very vulnerable position, there's no reason why Californian`s should have to accept this. But this is the way of the way. This is the way California politics has gone in recent years, it's really renewables at all costs. We're California, we want to lead in this area.

That's the theme song from what's coming down Sacramento but there's big cost to be paid and we're some level where pennywise and pound foolish. I mean, again, we just look back at the storms we had in the winter this past rainy season $34 to $37 billion of total damage.

It's just, that's one eighth of the state budget right there, that can be prevented but nobody in Sacramento is willing to make the investments to do that.

>> Bill Whalen: We've been doing California on your mind for how many years now? What, three, four, five years? Time is flying by.

 

>> Lee Ohanian: We're on our fifth anniversary this week, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah and we'll do a show later, I think maybe in September and talk about what we've learned. But it seems to be one of the defining characteristics of this little endeavor of ours, Lee, is the more things change, the more they remain the same.

You might recall quite vividly that there is, once upon a time in Sacramento, a witch hunt of the highest order going against big oil over the price of gasoline. And I wonder if that's gonna return at some point, because there is going to be a ballot measure, Lee, in November 2024, which is going to be expensive, and it's going to be ugly.

And it pits big oil against, basically, Governor Newsom and the environmentalist in Sacramento. Lee, they're trying to over term an oil drilling referendum and I'm already seeing commercials here in the Bay Area not related to the referendum, but kinda warming up to the public to the idea of not drilling.

And they're trying to link it to the price of gasoline, not sure if intellectually there's a Nexus there you can maybe explain that to me. But they're trying just to get people ready to think about gasoline and not getting gasoline and being all electric in California. So this is an issue for real here.

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, it's a huge issue, and I suspect it's completely unrealistic to have everyone into a gas powered vehicle by 2035, particularly when you look at the cost, I'm sorry, everyone into a electric vehicle by 2035. It's unrealistic because electric vehicles are really quite expensive compared to gasoline powered vehicles.

They can also be very expensive to service, if those batteries fail and at some point they do, those are incredibly expensive. And, Bill, we live in a state where 15 million people are living either at the poverty line, some below the poverty line, or very close to the poverty line.

So there's 5 million households there. So there's 5 million cars with households of 15 million people that have no means whatsoever to purchase an electric vehicle or to pay for the repair costs for then when that electric vehicle needs maintenance or in particular needs new batteries. And so, again, speak of some of our famous, very wealthy Californians, the Mark Zuckerberg of the world, no problem whatsoever.

But for those 15 million Californians who are living near poverty or under the poverty line, this is a huge problem. And there's simply no way they're gonna be able to put those people into electric vehicles by 2035 unless the rest of us pay for that. So again, this is just the theme song is renewables at all cost.

And really, there's a lot of people, well, I shouldn't say a lot of people, but some influential people in the state and certainly policymakers, are just willing to bang their head against the wall. And there's no economic rationale for doing this because California can't come close to moving the carbon needle.

And this is irrespective of how people feel about climate change, whether no matter where you are on that, there's incontrovertible evidence that California is just too small of a player within the global carbon realm to even be a drop in the bucket. There's simply absolutely no reason for California to be doing this, but it seems to be an anthem cry among California politicians to try to be out ahead of this.

And Newsom, as much as anybody, is on this bandwagon, but it's imparting enormous costs on an awful lot of people who just simply can't afford it.

>> Bill Whalen: So last question, Lee, and I'll let Jonathan take us to the next topic. The storm formerly known as Hillary went through California and then headed for Nevada, it was supposed to rain all over and complicate life at Burning Man.

So the question, Lee, aging hippie that you are, did you go to burning man and did you get rained on?

>> Lee Ohanian: I did not go to Burning Man, though I'm an aging hippie that won't make those kind of trips anymore. We had about a quarter inch here, we kept waiting.

The forecast was for heavy downpours, but we were on the outskirts. Just given the topography of California, we were pretty far east of the eye of the storm, so thankfully it missed us, so just a quarter of an inch.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, for the record I'm up in Palo Alto, we didn't get any of the store.

We got the tail end of the storm in terms of a funky sky and a little monsoon weather and it drizzled very lightly. But my sister, God bless her, who lives in South Carolina, worries about her brother, did call me to make sure I was safe, even though the storm was 500 miles away.

So, Beth, if you're listening I'm fine.

>> Lee Ohanian: Bill, I love your point about the plastic Patio furniture and we're gonna rebuild. One issue I forgot to mention regarding your question about the referendum on drilling, is that what oil is pushing back against is a regulation that would prevent them from drilling within two thirds of a mile of an awful lot of locations, including what are called health protection zones.

These would include schools, daycare centers, universities, colleges, community centers, healthcare facilities, prisons. And Bill, I'm aware. I actually tried to find out. I'm not in epidemiology, but I couldn't find any literature within this area that said, it is reasonable to expect that anyone within two thirds of a mile of oil drilling would be subject to any type of significant health issue whatsoever.

And you think in the year 2023 that we could safely drill within say, half a mile of areas where there are people. So this is really a thinly disguised approach to continue to repress fossil fuel product not just fossil fuel production, but fossil fuel consumption. It's all of the big picture to get California off fossil fuels and this is a big cost and it does literally nothing in terms of reducing the amount of carbon that goes into the ear for those people.

 

>> Bill Whalen: It is a window in today's California, Lee, that when the legislature does something the business community thinks is just punitive, we go to the ballot and settle it.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Lee, your column this week for California on your mind, describe how governor Newsom despite a range of problems in his home state, believes he can excel as a national political figure.

Lee, does Governor Newsom have the political capital succeed in a national campaign for president? Should Biden step aside? And if so, did his proactive posture last week during on the tropical storm that we just spoke about give, give any lift to a possible presidential run?

>> Lee Ohanian: Jonathan, Newsom has been increasingly inserting himself onto the national political stage to the point that the San Francisco Chronicle which is his hometown paper when he was mayor, roughly 15 to 18 years ago and a strong Newsom supporter.

The newspapers always supported Newsom in elections. San Francisco Chronicle wrote a right side editorial, so their entire editorial board wrote an editorial which said, governor, we need you home. We weren't kidding when we said California has serious problems and you need to be attending to those. But what we see from Newsom is lots of Twitter fights with Governor Abbott from Texas and of course, with Ron DeSantis from Florida.

What we've seen from Newsom is him traveling to the south, to red states, to meet with Democrats in those states. We've seen him doing an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. It sure sounds to me like Newsom is running a national political campaign, and the most obvious one would be 2024 presidency.

Of course, Biden has said he will be running for a second term, and Newsom has said absolutely nothing about trying to upset that apple cart. But Biden's popularity is now below 40%. I believe that's the lowest approval rating at this stage of presidency, perhaps since Jimmy Carter over nearly 50 years ago when the country was a much, much different place.

Nearly two-thirds of people poll thinks Biden is too old to run for a second term. The last few weeks have seen his son Hunter's legal troubles become much more serious, and they have the potential to involve the president as well. So I wouldn't be shocked if the president decided not to run for second term.

I'm not saying he won't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't. And if he didn't, I would expect to see Newsom jump into that ring. It seems like he's stomping at the bid. But ironically, we're the largest state. He likes to talk about how we're the fifth largest economy.

And yet, earlier today, we talked about there's 15 million people in the state living in near poverty. Only one out of four of our school kids test at the level of proficiency in math or in math or reading and we have a governor who seems preoccupied with everything, but dealing with issues within his state.

Jonathan, one thing I just thought was so striking is that if we go back about two years, Newsom's approval rating had declined 46% in the most liberal state in the country. He was in the middle of a recall. And then just five months later, he faced Larry Elder.

Larry Elder was his primary opponent, the recall. He won, I think with roughly 62%. So if you think what happened between that 46% approval rating and that 62% winning margin, what happened is that Newsom's campaign and the state's Democratic Party figured out a remarkably winning strategy which is to paint Republicans in the worst possible terms.

And Newsom was able to crush elder and everyone else who ran against him by creating a fear campaign and Newsom's continued with that fear campaign ever since then. And Bill, I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you think about his current performance. Because in January, Newsom gave his second inaugural address.

First was in 2019, second was in January of 2023. Bill, in that inaugural address, he didn't mentioned one item about either what his accomplishments were for the state or where he was going. It was really simply a diatribe about red state politicians. And, Bill, I'll leave you with this thought.

Newsom campaigned in 2018 on a Marshall plan for housing. Well, housing construction today in California is even lower than it was when Newsom became governor. I thought it was a rock bottom in 2019. It's gone even lower and he talked about this Marshall Plan for housing and he set himself up to this goal.

He's close to 90% below that goal. I would love it if the states media would hold him accountable for this, but he seems to be skating through.

>> Bill Whalen: He does, Lee. I don't hold it against him if he has presidential ambitions. It is the kind of want of every California governor, it seems, to either run or think about running.

I guess Arnold Schwarzenegger is the exception But that's because sneaky little thing called the constitution wouldn't let him run. So I don't begrudge news him for having presidential ambitions. The question as you point out, though is, is he doing his day job? And here's where things get complicated, but what he has done is he has very effectively put himself into the conversation should something happen to Joe Biden, should Biden decide not to run.

And he has to do this, Lee, to Jonathan. Because if all of a sudden out of nowhere, announces he's not running, all hell breaks loose on the democratic side. I mean, it's just, it's, you know, go back to 1968 when Lyndon Johnson finally stepped down. Well, it was because Eugene McCarthy had outperformed in New Hampshire, then Bobby Kennedy gets in the race and Johnson sees the riding on the wall and steps out.

It won't be quite the same as 1968, will be a shock to the system. And there are two lanes for democrats here, and one will be the Kamala Harris lane because she's the vice president. She's there and she'll run and she'll be strong, because it's a party obsessed with identity politics.

So the nation's first female black vice president will have quite an in. But the second lane will be a very strong governor, someone outside of Washington who is much younger than Joe Biden. Much more articulate than Joe Biden, much more feisty and fiery than Joe Biden, who can kind of stick it to the opposition.

And that's what Newsom has done a very good job of. He's really kind of outpaced grit and Witchburg in this regard and I noticed this the other day. The New York Times did a story on Republicans and then somehow switched into talking about Democrats. And here was Stuart Stephens, who was a Republican consultant.

He was the political brains behind Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. Not a bragging point, by the way. He said that he thinks, he really seems to be, he has a bromance going with Gavin Newsom. And he said that Gavin Newsom is not just the governor of California, but he said he could be the governor of Arizona.

He could be the governor of New Mexico, he could be the governor of Pennsylvania, he could be the governor of Ohio. Which point I just kind of screeched because I thought, wait a second, Gavin Newsom, who is the embodiment of California coastal metrosexuality. Who is at war with guns and the gun culture, who is at war with SUVs.

Who, like many a coastal Democrat, seems to kind of take a rather condescending anthropological approach to people living in flyover states. That guy would not fly in Ohio as a gubernatorial candidate. I'm sorry, but the point is he has put himself in a position, and I think, Lee, the tell is gonna be when he faces, if he faces Ron DeSantis and that debate come November.

Mark Baraback, who's a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, longtime political writer for them. Wrote a really interesting column the other day about a debate that happened in 1967 between Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. And Bobby Kennedy, then a United States senator, run for president next year.

And he said, you know what's interesting about that debate? Reagan kind of mopped the floor with Bobby Kennedy. Now that might have been a testament to Ronald Reagan's skills as a politician and a debater and kind of quick on his feet. And maybe also Bobby Kennedy was kind of a curious place in 1967.

He still kind of a zombie from his brother's assassination and still trying to figure out where he was going in life. But we've had this before. But it'll be very interesting to see if Newsom and DeSantis do square off on what happens. And I'm gonna actually praise Gavin Newsom, something that doesn't happen much of this podcast.

But I would be very surprised if he didn't win that debate, because just based on what we've seen of Ron DeSantis presidential campaign, I would put my money on Newsom as a debater right now. But final note here on the filibuster, you do raise a great point, Lee, and that is, at what point does Gavin Newsom get media scrutiny, and where does it come from?

You mentioned housing and not reaching that goal. Let's go back to his time as mayor of San Francisco and promising to end homelessness. Let's go back to his zillion promises about ending homelessness in California and the billions upon billions of dollars thrown at it. Let's go to all the task force he creates.

This is a governor who loves big ideas, who loves big splashy announcements, and then they always fall apart. The devil is in the details. Like our favorite recovery task force with Tom Steyer. Great example this just, it ends up really delivering nothing, just a bunch of outlines, but no principles.

So at some point, news has got to be held accountable. But you know what, guys? The way the media works right now, that guy's gonna have a formidable tailwind because natural reporters are going to swoon and they think this is the second coming of Camelot.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah and Bill ironically just to put a little bit of a twist on the old saw of the enemy of my enemy is my friend for the democratic party now in California.

I think their enemy, the Republicans, have become their friend in the sense that you don't need to have accomplishments. You don't need to advance the ball. You don't need to make lives better by having functional government and making good use of tax dollars and increasing the kinds of investments we've talked about here all the time.

All you really need to do is just talk about the evils of the republican party and just keep saying the name Trump. And that seems to be enough to keep, not only keeping off it, it seems to be enough to keep the media from asking questions such as.

Governor how is it possible that housing construction is even lower today than it was when you took office? Wasn't this the major campaign promise you made? Not one person, not one Ellis asking that question. I'd like to see him in a debate with DeSantis because there are some statistics that he just can't really run away from.

I watched the interview he had with Hannity. I think Hannity just didn't know enough about the state to ask questions that would be a little bit uncomfortable for Newsom. I found it amusing. Newsom talked about how he reduced homelessness in San Francisco. Well, the way he did that is by putting them on a bus and driving them out of San Francisco.

And I think that policy was actually reasonably effective because it sent people back home to their families. And an awful lot of them were able to be able to function with those families to the point of not really returning to San Francisco. I think that was back in 2000, what, 2006 or so 2007.

I think today's Democratic Party, it would be anathema to talk about putting people on bus and shipping them out. He certainly criticizes Abbott Destanas enough for putting people who've come into the country with that documentation on buses. So that would just be an example where Hannity, I think, just didn't know enough about what's going on in the state to make it a little bit less comfortable for Newsom than it was in that interview.

 

>> Bill Whalen: So one final observation, then we can move on. I think if Newsom does ever get the point of being an active presidential candidate, not this current shadow thing he's doing, Republicans have to think long and hard about how to approach him. And I say this as somebody who worked on George HW Bush's campaign in 1992, and we vastly underestimated Bill Clinton.

And we thought if we could just make fun of Arkansas and just kind of let Bill Clinton's character permeate into the electorate, that he wouldn't stand a chance. And what we overlooked was that Clinton was engaging with voters and they connected with him. I say this in this regard.

If you watched the republican debate last night in Milwaukee, if you watched how Republicans have talked issues in the past year or so. It's a party that's, besides being dominated by Donald Trump, is really just obsessed with woke issues. And yes, we talk about woke ism on this podcast as well.

But there'd be a great temptation on the part of republicans to just attack Gavin Newsom as the head of a just crazy, woke, out of control state. Wendley and Jonathan, I think there's a, probably another way to approach this was actually the question of do you really want California to be America's showcase?

Because usum himself calls California what the preview of America's coming attractions, right. He's been saying that for years. Well, it's not just woke in California. And, Lee, what I'd suggest is maybe a different approach where you have to talk about the failure of how California's economy works, the failure of people being able to buy a house.

The failure of the public school system, not able to live in California, constant barrage of mandates, restrictions thrown upon the people. We're not a free state in that regard. And so I think that is maybe the more compelling message to throw at newsom rather than just trying to get him in a back and forth over, woke this and woke that.

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, the partisan war is not really winning at the end of the day. There's just a lot of failures that really have nothing to do with partisanship, such as home affordability, such as grossly deficient schools. Such as, we have fewer miles of serviceable roadways today than we did in 1990.

Those things matter to everybody. They cost everybody. And the woke issues just really end up losing sight of what the real problems are.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Bill, I was actually struck by something in the New York Times interview involving Stuart Stephens, and that's when Stephen said that Newsom could build a winning coalition.

You just mentioned Bill Clinton's ability to engage voters. He was in Arkansas, where there was a mix of Republican and Democratic voters. But is Governor Newsom ever forged a bipartisan coalition in his life?

>> Bill Whalen: No, again, I think Stuart Stevens is just, I don't know what the problem is there, but Stewart just was not a good day.

I think political vision wise. Bill Clinton's slogan in 1992 was a different kind of Democrat. He talked about being from the south, being much more conservative. Remember, a man is put to death in Arkansas in 1992. He has mental disabilities. He was not really mentally competent or sound, but they executed him anyway.

Bill Clinton talked about being strong on foreign policy. He promised a middle class tax cut, he promised welfare reform. He ran against the Democratic Party in many ways, and that's not Gavin Newsom. So I just don't know where Newsom would pick up independent worry votes across the country.

He'd have to run against Donald Trump Junior, I think in that regard, he'd have to have a straw man. And Lee pointed this out earlier, and this is the key. When Newsom was reelected or when he did survive the recall, he got about the same number of votes as did Joe Biden in terms of percentage.

Well, he did that because he turned Larry Elder into Donald Trump. But if Newsom's not running against Donald Trump, let's say in 2028, he's got to similarly demonize a Republican the same way. I just don't see what in the way of Gavin Newsom policies there is for a right of center, if you will, not progressively inclined independent, to embrace.

This is a man who just governs from the left.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, there's no sense in which I don't think he's ever tried to reach common ground. I mean, he's vilified Republicans to the point that trying to reach common ground is just in another universe for him. You know, Bill, I sometimes mention to people that, I ask them, I say, you know what?

Look up Bill Clinton's 1996 State of the Union address, you can find it on the Internet. And, you know, at that time, if, if that was the middle of the road for the democratic party compared to what it is today in that state of the union address, he talked about, he talked about, essentially school vouchers and school choice.

That's anathema now within the Democratic Party. He talked about welfare to work, that's anathema within the Democratic Party. That was the speech he gave in which he said the famous line, the era of big government is over. So that's roughly 25 years ago. So anyone thinking about politics and the history of political movements, just how much the Democratic Party has changed in the last quarter century?

I mean, it's remarkable. And Clinton did deals with Newt Gingrich. Probably not an easy thing to do, Gingrich was pretty far to the right at that time. Now we really see no even a willingness in Washington to do deals. Bill, I used to think about a politician as someone who tried to bring people together, tried to forge consensus.

And tried to get a deal done where you're constituents were really reasonably happy with the outcome. Knowing that you're not gonna get everything out of the deal. That seems to be a loss to art in politics these days.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, one final prediction, then we'll jump on the next segment.

Gavin Newsom worships at the altar of the aforementioned Robert F Kennedy. And I will predict to you that if he does run for president, either in the 2024 cycle or the 2028 cycle, he will at some point do what Bobby Kennedy did. And he will go on a tour of poverty in America, and he will talk about it as a eye-opening experience.

He'll use it to demonstrate compassion that he's not always good at. And he'll use that to kind of as a four-way, because one of the challenges he'll have as a national Democrat is his connection with black and Latino voters. Because the Newsom existence is not really born of civil rights.

It's not really, he doesn't have a tale of woe to tell of himself. Well, he'll talk about his dyslexia, and he'll talk about his mom being divorced, blah, blah, blah. But he is not from an oppressed minority necessarily. He's of a good looking, kind of privileged white guy from the San Francisco Bay area.

So I predict, guys, he will do something like that to try to get and go to the democratic base.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Gentlemen, let's take a moment for a special on this show, and that is the annual Whalen rant. The office of the governor came out with its 16th class at the California hall of Fame.

It includes some interesting entertainment figures, among them the singer Etta James, actress and public servant Shirley Temple Black and actress and screenwriter Carrie Fisher. But noticeably absent are some key figures from the gold rush who are apparently left off the list. And that's John Sutter and James W Marshall.

Also, Governor Jerry Brown is not on that list. Neither is House speakers Nancy Pelosi and US Senator Dianne Feinstein. Bill, what happened?

>> Bill Whalen: Well, so the California hall of Fame, this is a Maria Shriver legacy when she was the first lady of California, it goes back to 2006.

The governor and the first lady make the picks. They get recommendations forward to them, I guess, Lee, we didn't make the cut this time around. And they come out with a handful of selections. So every year it drives me crazy because first of all, this is just checking off boxes.

And if you go through the seven people selected, they fill out various boxes in terms of their identity and what they did in life and so forth. That always kinda drives me crazy that we just really look at so much people's accomplishments, but just how they fit into a mosaic.

What really kind of got me going this year, though, is everybody on this list has two things in common. Number one, they all have a California connection, but secondly, they're all deceased. Now, we're a state of 39 million people. And I have a hard time believing there's not a single living Californian worthy of hall of fame and dust if we're gonna have this silly little thing in Sacramento.

So, yeah, so my rant goes on every year about this. And what really stands out, Lee and Jonathan, is how the political class in California gets overlooked in this and really living politicians. Now, you mentioned Diane Feinstein, I believe, you mentioned Nancy Pelosi. Willie Brown, the legendary lawmaker in Sacramento, the Ayatollah, the assemblyman and then mayor of San Francisco, a large figure in the San Francisco civil rights movement, the 1960s, he hasn't made the cut.

Jerry Brown hasn't made the cut. Jerry Brown's so prickly, I doubt he would show up for it, he probably thinks it's nonsensical. And you know who hasn't made the cut? And this really surprises me since his ex wife is in the hall of Fame and two of his bodybuilding buddies, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If ever there is the embodiment of California beyond like the Beach Boys, it's Arnold friggin Schwarzenegger, and yet there he isn't. So it drives me crazy every year because you just look at the choices. They just all are just so politically correct. And it's just always shocking for what gets overlooked.

So the end of rant.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, Bill, it does seem to be a head scratcher that Schwarzenegger and Feinstein and Pelosi weren't, weren't picked. I'm imagining they probably will be before long, hopefully before they pass. But it's interesting, you mentioned John Sutter and the California gold rush, I doubt.

And interestingly enough, Sutter, we live in an area where we talk about reparations for people who had things taken from them. Sutter lost an enormous amount of wealth when gold was discovered on his property, and virtually everyone and their brother overran that property. And was taking gold, what ostensibly belonged to him, on his property.

He sought to redress those claims, never received any compensation whatsoever for that. I don't think, I suspect he'll never appear on that list. The history, I believe, was that he was not so kind to indigenous people who worked for him. I suspect that'll probably be enough to keep him off that list.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Well, Leland Stanford is in the California hall of Fame, and I maybe shouldn't be saying this because this is people living in glass houses, if you will, because I work on the campus, the university that he and his wife created. Leland Stanford's record in regard to Asians living in California is not so stellar, is it?

So if you want to cancel people, you go back to Stanford. But I'll give Newsom and his wife credit for this. They avoided controversy in this regard. There's been a very bad habit on the part of California governors to pick big name celebrities for this, why? It gets clicks and maybe they'll show up for it, but you know what?

Most big name celebrities don't care about this. This is not getting an Oscar. So they don't show up for Sacramento. It's kind of embarrassing, so you know what? You pick a bunch of dead people, you're not going to get snubbed. You won't get pardon, pun ghosted.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Bill, your column this week pays tribute to former Governor Pete Wilson, your former boss who turned at 90 yesterday.

He spent his birthday at the Nixon Library, my former employer where he gave post-game analysis of the GOP primary debates. It's an interesting venue for the occasion since it was Richard Nixon, who gave Wilson very strong encouragement to first enter politics in 1967. Bill, tell us about Governor Wilson's legacy at 90.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so full disclosure here. I worked for Pete Wilson for the better part of five years in Sacramento as a communications aide and then his chief speech writer. So I'm a part of someone who comes to Pete Wilson. I will defend him to the death and you mentioned the Nixon connection and that's a really fun, fascinating one.

Because back in the mid-1960s when Nixon was gearing up to run for 1968, he was looking for young talent and he was looking around the country. He met with Pat Buchanan, that's how Pat Buchanan started become Pat Buchanan. He was one of the young people brought in by Nixon.

And Nixon was told, you should meet with this young guy named Pete Wilson, who was a lawyer out in San Diego, and be a good hire. So they sat down and Nixon started talking about his campaign. And then Wilson said, well, I thought, due respect, Mr. Vice President, Nixon was former vice president at the time.

He said, well, I'm thinking about something else. Nixon said, what is it, Pete? Said, well, I've got my eye on an assembly seat. At which point, as the governor's told me, the conversation just shifts. And suddenly, Nixon is in strategist mode. Tell me about the district, Pete. What's the lineup for it?

What are you thinking? And stuff like that. And at the end of it, Nixon said, if you think you want to run, if you got to run, you got to go for it and it was great advice from Nixon. Probably say, Pete Wilson going to jail for Watergate in retrospect.

But he's always had an instant connection to Reagan that way, he also had a connection to Reagan. He went into the assembly in 1967, Savior Ronald Reagan went to Sacramento. Reagan helped campaign for him when he ran for the Senate in 1982 when he ran for governor in 1990, but I wrote a column for the Hoover's California on your mind and I called it 9 for 90 cuz I pointed out 9 things about Pete Wilson's career in addition to a couple of things I just mentioned.

And one thing that stood out, Lee, is a lot of the squabbles that we had back in the 1990s in California and nationally have still not been resolved, that includes the immigration debate. Wilson was of course, one of the lead voices behind Proposition 187. The immigration ballot measure that passed about 59% of the vote in that election and was kind of the beginning of the nation's conversation about immigration, that if you look at the border right now, I'd argue we still haven't solved Wilson.

In 1996, Lee, and Jonathan, wanted to alter the Republican national platform and do away with the language. It called for a constitutional amendment with the against abortion which Wilson saw is just nonsensical because A, the public is not there on that. They did not want an absolute restriction.

And B, you never get a constitutional amendment. Witness the fact with going back to Gavin Newsom that he wants to do a constitutional amendment on abortion which is really, Lee, about showcasing presidential ambitions, it'll never go anywhere. So Wilson proposed what he called a personal responsibility plank in the platform.

He got absolutely massacred for doing it, but you know what? The California Republican Party is convening this fall for its annual convention and they're gonna have a big knockdown drag him out over changing the party's platform over, you guessed it, abortion. So getting back to our statement, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

California is having some political fights that it had 25 years ago, but Wilson is 90. His father lived to be 1970s, one of those kinda tough, stringy old marines. He still follows politics. He doesn't get into the public debate over it too much. He has devoted a majority of his post governorship to the national World War two museum in New Orleans.

But I had the privilege several years ago of sitting down with him and doing an oral history with him for UCLA. And it was I'll confess, some scotch and cigars were involved as well. But it was just a great chance to sit down and just pick the brain of just a really, really bright political mind.

And I miss working with him in a lot of ways including the $750 house that I rented Sacramento at the time, but I am just the better and wiser for having known Pete Wilson. And governor, if you have their listening, a belated happy 90th birthday.

>> Lee Ohanian: Bill, I admire him greatly and consider him in the best of possible terms as an old school politician.

One who had a lot of integrity, one who was, who was willing not to. He didn't kick the can down the road. He inherited a California economy when he was inaugurated in 91. It's probably the worst California economy I imagine since the Great Depression.

>> Bill Whalen: Lee, when he came into office, Lee, the California budget, you're gonna laugh here.

It was $43 billion at the time compared to $300 billion today. He had a $14 billion deficit to make up one in $3.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yes, so a horrible fiscal situation and an economy that had suffered just a terrible shock from the standpoint of the end of the Cold War meant the end of military spending in California at that time.

Military spending including California's huge aerospace industry was I believe, close to 10% of California's GDP at that time. And that just totally dried up and that was not coming back. So he managed an incredibly weak economy along with that fiscal crisis. And Bill, I remember the LA Times praising him for putting the state's fiscal situation on a much sounder, on my standard footing.

Very impressive not only just very impressive politician, but very impressive leader who California benefited enormously from when he ran for reelection in 1994.

>> Bill Whalen: That besides getting reelected, I think the crowning moment of his life was when the Los Angeles Times grudgingly endorsed him for reelection. He said, he literally told me words.

In fact, I wore down the bastards. But a couple other notes about Nils Wilson that we can close out, he had this interesting hybrid of political stances. You could go back the 1990s and you could see the big scrapes he got into over illegal immigration, affirmative action, Proposition 209.

He put a school choice measure on the ballot at one point. He got into a big scrap over union dues for political purposes. The list goes on, his crime measures and so forth. But this was also a governor who's not afraid of larger government solutions like class size reduction, early childhood programs to help kids get a better start in education and that's something very much missing from today's politics.

Look at the republican field. If the Democrats end up running candidates in 2024, if Biden doesn't run, show me a prominent Republican or Democrat who would be what I'd call a hybrid politician in that regard, who dips from column A and dips from column B which gets back to our conversation about Gavin Newsom running in Ohio or Pennsylvania as a presidential candidate.

How can he relate to people leery of Democrats in that state? Whereas Pete Wilson, if he had actually succeeded as a presidential campaign again, he ran briefly in 1995 and it didn't work out. He might have been interesting in that regard. The final other thing to close out here is there are few things better in life and politics than to live to see the day when you're vindicated.

And back in the 1990s, Wilson got into a lot of fights with the California Teachers Association over union dues and just clout that the unions had over education in California. A lot of people very quietly said, layoff of this, Pete, because you're just kind of antagonizing teachers, you know, kind of overstating the purpose.

Anybody who thinks that he was overstating what he said back in the day about the influence of unions just watch what happened to California during COVID regarding school shutdowns. And speaking of COVID since it appears to be rearing its ugly head again, we may be heading for that this fall in another conversation.

But again, I just was very blessed to work for the guy. I owe my Hoover institution connection to him. And he just was just a really, really delightful man to know and delightful man to work for.

>> Lee Ohanian: Now he was way ahead of his time, Bill, in my opinion.

I recall that he issued an executive order banning smoking the majority of government buildings in the state. I believe he cited the risk of secondhand smoke in terms of public health issues. So that was what he had of his time and he was way ahead of his time in terms of really, really worrying about the deficient education, a lot of California kids were receiving.

And as you noted, reducing class size and promoting remedial education. He was a fellow whose heart's in the right place and it wasn't just that his heart was in the right place. He tried really hard and he advanced the ball. And that, again, that's something that we don't see today.

 

>> Bill Whalen: I doubt a California governor will let him in during his life to the hall of fame, but name me another California politician who has served as a member of the legislature, who has been the mayor of a big city. Wilson was the mayor of San Diego for 12 years.

He served for eight years the United States Senate. He's the only Republican to defeat a Jerry Brown in a statewide election as well and then he served eight years as governor of California. So that's four bases covered by one politician. That doesn't happen in California much?

>> Lee Ohanian: No, that's trifecta plus.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yes.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, as always, gentlemen, this has been very interesting and timely analysis. Thank you for your time.

>> Bill Whalen: Thank you, Lee and Jonathan.

>> Lee Ohanian: Good to see you fellas.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: You've been listening to matters of policy and politics, the Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world.

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Again, this is Jonathan Movroydis sitting in Bill Whalen's chair this week. He'll be back for another episode of Matters of Policy and Politics. Thank you for listening.

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