It’s one thing when advocates of some pandemic medical measures argue that the picture was incomplete at the time, but another one when politicians implementing blatantly discriminatory regimes act that way.
Gov. Newsom, who nearly lost his job and promised pathway to the presidency, is trying to rewrite his record ahead of a potential debate with Gov. DeSantis, by playing innocent. It was the ‘science’, you see.
It kept changing on us.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said criticism of California’s tough Covid-19 restrictions was valid and he would have taken an entirely different approach, given what he knows now about the pandemic.
“I think we would’ve done everything differently,” Newsom said in a taped interview set to air on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
“I think all of us in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We’re experts in hindsight. We’re all geniuses now.”
Please. We didn’t know that outdoor park benches and skate parks were safer than Hollywood sets?
We didn’t know that Amazon warehouses were not safer than small businesses?
Newsom didn’t know that dining at the French Laundry with his cronies while everyone else was warned that they would die if they left their houses might come off badly?
What Newsom won’t do is admit to specific faults and there’s a lot of collective blame. “We” all made mistakes.
Host Chuck Todd pressed the California Democrat on specifics, including whether Newsom and state officials were too accommodating to the film industry during periods of strict distancing requirements where Californians were prevented, for example, from gathering for family funerals. “I think there’s a lot of humility. And we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And it was hardly I; it was we, collectively,” Newsom responded.
The humility is overwhelming. Everyone made mistakes: the state governor and the guy in the parking lot. Let’s not blame anyone, just know that next time around we’ll do things completely differently in the same way.
Despite considerable prodding from Todd on specifics where Newsom would have made different decisions in his hard-hit state, including the protracted closure of in-person learning at schools, the governor largely kept to generalities.
At the same time, Newsom bemoaned the partisan nature of the pandemic and how every decision by he and counterparts in other states and the White House were all viewed through a partisan prism.
“It should be alarming to all of us that that all of a sudden health became partisan,” he said. “And that’s something we’re going to pay a big price, you’re right, going forward. But it won’t break us because we’re remarkably resilient.”
Much as “we” really meant “I” in the previous quote, that’s what it means here too. Newsom is incredibly resilient. Being hated for his abusive policies won’t break him. He’s got money and he’s first in line to the presidency if Biden blows it.
He’s really sorry for the things he won’t specify but that are really everyone’s fault. And they won’t stop him from trying to rule the country.