A Letter to Gavin Newsom on Why He Shouldn't Be President.
Dear Gavin,
Nothing personal. But I’m praying you’ll never be president.
I tell you this not because I think there’s someone better, like that Pennsylvania governor who can’t get along with his neighbors.
I declare this not because I dislike the idea of being represented in the White House by my demographic doppelganger, a hyper-loquacious Gen-X Californian of Scottish and Irish heritage.
And I say this not because I think you should stay in Marin or spend more time with your family, as your son recently suggested.
Rather, I don’t want you to be president because I don’t want anyone to be president.
The United States shouldn’t have presidents anymore.
Isn’t it obvious?
The one public service Donald Trump has provided is demonstrating that the American presidency has become unacceptably dangerous—and must be ended, permanently.
Look at what he’s done to our beloved California: establishing concentration camps, illegally holding back aid, seeking to strip our children of citizenship, causing a water emergency, abandoning communities, invading communities, backing anti-health propaganda that could sicken millions, and disappearing so many of our neighbors, many of them legal immigrants.
Nationally, he’s already ended the U.S. republic, ruling as a dictator, defying law and Congress and the courts, unconstitutionally undermining American businesses with tariffs, and working to steal elections. Internationally, he’s replacing authoritarians and dictators with authoritarians and dictators friendlier to him, starting illegal wars, and attacking our closest allies and trading partners. He’s stoking a nuclear weapons race, accelerating climate change with a move to fossil fuels, and removing protections from AI. All this while he and his family corruptly make billions off his official power.
And there’s no way to stop him, because the American presidency, always too powerful, has been supercharged by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices’ 2024 decision granting presidents immunity for official acts has put the presidency itself beyond the reach of law.
Since the office holds the power to blow up the world, we earthlings face a stark reality: We must destroy the presidency before it destroys us.
While urging you, Gavin, not to run for president, I want to distinguish myself from other political and media critics of your undeclared campaign. My fellow California writers seem to be suggesting you should stop thinking big. These other commentators complain that your trips across the country and around the world are campaign-style distractions from your job as governor, which they say you aren’t doing.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom is merely the top elected official of one state, even if he can boast that it’s the fourth- or fifth-largest economy in the world,” wrote L.A. Times columnist George Skelton, perfectly channeling the state’s clueless establishment. “Contrary to hackneyed bragging points, California is not a ‘nation state.’ We’re a state—highly populated, but one of 50.”
Skelton and other critics are doubly wrong—because they fail to recognize the unprecedented situation California faces.
First, our state effectively has been kicked out of the union by Trump and turned into an occupied colony of an extractive regime. Californians now live in a post-republic, post-constitution purgatory, outside the country but legally just enough inside it to justify state violence against us.
In this context, California needs alliances with other countries and provinces and global cities to defend our economy and to provide essential government services. As post-republic America descends further into dictatorship, such alliances offer Californians their best chance to build a new democratic republic on the Pacific.
Second, you are not neglecting your job as governor. To the contrary, you are continuing your practice of doing too much, with some big swings in your last year, including launching a new water plan and leading the most ambitious education reform this century despite resistance from the powerful California Teachers Association.
The fact that you are doing so much right, that you are reading the moment correctly, makes your desire to run for president even more troubling.
Why are you pursuing a job that no one, not even you, should have?
Do you want to be a dictator? Because that’s the job you’d be running for if you make your campaign official. As someone who admires you, I find it scary that you—however satirically—are posting like dictator on social media, and even scarier that your party is rewarding your caudillo cosplay with a big bump in the polls.
Your rhetoric suggests you think you can renew the presidency and the country. While I appreciate that politicians must be self-assured, such confidence goes beyond arrogance into madness. As Lord Acton warned, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and, as you acknowledge in your beautiful and bestselling memoir, you reveal plenty of character flaws. Getting elected dictator could well be an act of self-destruction.
Much better to stand down and build on your proposal for a constitutional amendment enshrining gun control by starting a movement to rewrite the defunct American constitution.
If you must run for president, please organize your campaign around a promise to be the last president. Use the office to end the world’s most dangerous presidency.
To prepare for such a campaign, I suggest you devote your prodigious memory to capturing all the details of the life of George Mason.
He was one of three Founding Fathers who refused to sign the constitution—because the convention rejected his proposal for a “constitutional council,” essentially a multi-headed executive.
Instead, the other Founders created a one-person presidency with so much power that, as Mason predicted more than 200 years ago, it would inevitably turn into a “monarchy or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy.”
Democratically yours,
Joe
