When tragedy strikes, human nature demands both answers and scapegoats—not that Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires are likely to produce a four-legged culprit à la Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
So, where to point the finger now that some of the wealthier pockets of California lie in charred ruins, with the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and other adjacent communities beginning their 2025 looking more like Berlin 1945?
Let’s start with the Golden State itself and the notion that a land prone to fires, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and infestation maybe isn’t a stable platform for 38 million souls. And to be clear: No part of California is safe. Last late week, a mild earthquake struck San Francisco.
Next up: Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Setting aside the almost-comical timing of Herronor being in equatorial Africa when her city burst into flames (eerily reminiscent of the late governor Pat Brown vacationing in Greece when L.A.’s Watts neighborhood rioted in the summer of 1965), she can’t explain why her modernistic metropolis is saddled with an outdated water system unable to handle multiple blazes, or why she okayed budget cuts to the city’s fire-prevention services.
And further up the political ladder: Gavin Newsom. California’s attention-seeking governor has been omnipresent since the fires erupted, rarely shunning a camera pointed his way. But omniscient, he’s not. The Newsom administration’s inability to step up the removal of brush and deadwood literally is fuel for California fires. Ironically, this is a governor who spent part of his first day in office promising… you guessed it: a better approach to fire prevention.
Or perhaps the blame lies with Californians themselves.
Three times over the course of 14 months—a September 2021 recall election plus primary and general elections in 2022—the Golden State’s electorate chose to keep Newsom in office. Just as, in the same general election, Angelenos preferred Bass, a seasoned member of Congress but sorely lacking in executive or crisis-management skills, to the developer Rick Caruso, whose Palisades Village mall was in the fire’s path. (A fun thought experiment: As Bass was on Joe Biden’s shortlist for running mates, it could have been her and not her fellow Californian Kamala Harris leading her party to the anti-woke abattoir.)
The question now: Where does Los Angeles go from here? And, for that matter, Sacramento.
As for the Sacramento side of the equation, Newsom wasted little time before calling for an independent investigation into why fire hydrants ran dry. The problem with this: In Gavin Newsom’s California, process typically supplants progress.
Tasked with figuring a way to rejuvenate California’s COVID-stricken economy, Newsom didn’t strong-arm his way to a legislative stimulus package. Instead, he created a 98-member Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery that was long on recognizable California names but short on innovation—so underwhelming of an endeavor that Newsom eventually euthanized it, but only after Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in disgust over the state’s draconian COVID policies that had kept California theme parks closed.
Sadly, that’s not an isolated case of Newsom-style paralysis by analysis. For years, Californians have waited breathlessly for the end product of the governor’s task force on oxygen, part of a statewide "Oxygen Strategy" to address the shortage of the gas amidst the pandemic.
An investigation tasked with getting to the root causes of a disaster shouldn’t be confused with an actual action plan for how to make the Golden State more fire-resistant. As such, whatever form the "independent" examination takes shape, prepare to be underwhelmed.
Here’s why.
First, such an inquiry might settle for the lowest-hanging fruit for castigation. The early frontrunner: Janisse Quiñones, the general manager of L.A.’s Department of Water and Power, whose $750,000 annual salary qualifies her as the highest-paid city employee, though she apparently ignored warnings of a dry reservoir and broken hydrants.
Meanwhile, look to the governor and lawmakers to engage in yet another round of populist theatrics. Last year, Newsom called for a special legislative session to address gasoline prices. More recently, it was a special session to "Trump-proof" California.
Judging by the governor’s X feed, Big Oil and Big Pill have a new friend in the Newsom doghouse: Big Insurance. Indeed, Californians deserve answers as to why insurers canceled policies in fire-stricken areas. But lawmakers may choose to gloss over the reality that California’s insurance industry was in a state of crisis well before the fires broke out—and Sacramento didn’t have a long-term fix, other than a state insurance fund unable to keep up with the demands of a constricting private market and the exorbitant cost of housing within a short drive to the ocean (California’s FAIR plan provides up to $3 million in coverage for residential policyholders; the median home value in the Pacific Palisades: $3.1 million).
As for more prominent elected officials taking a hit: a state legislature dominated by Democratic supermajorities isn’t in the business of embarrassing Democratic governors and mayors. What that does create is an opening for congressional Republicans to examine the matter. And perhaps a chance for a moribund state GOP to rebrand itself as a champion of more sensible government.
And there’s the possibility that the progressive mindset that dominates the Golden State will revert to a bad habit: confusing the writing of big checks with flipping the script on California’s societal woes.
Under Newsom’s watch, California has spent over $24 billion addressing the state’s homelessness plight, without bothering to track outcomes. Last year, California’s homeless population grew by 3 percent. Root into Newsom’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year and one finds boasts of billions in taxpayer dollars devoted to fire prevention. And yet state and local leaders looked dazed and confused as the Los Angeles fires spread.
Having spent roughly half of my life now as a Californian, I’ve come to learn that despite its angular design, the Golden State’s challenges and solutions are circular—natural disasters are a frequent occurrence, and some answers already exist.
This week marks the 31st anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake, the last great natural disaster to strike California’s Southland—L.A.’s freeways collapsing, over 340,000 motorists denied their daily way to work, and another economic crisis striking California during what was, at the time, its greatest recession since World War II.
Faced with the challenge of how to reopen the Santa Monica Freeway, then-governor Pete Wilson didn’t waste his time on podcasts frequented by big political donors, as opposed to Newsom. Instead, he got government out of the way—streamlining contracting processes, incentivizing construction, and reopening the freeway roughly 15 months ahead of schedule. To the extent that Newsom attempts a similar approach will test both his institutional knowledge of his office and the extent to which he’s a hostage of progressive special interests (labor unions and environmentalists).
Speaking of the left, a nation that venerates celebrity status now gets the best and worst of distraught and displaced stars. But whereas the Oscar-winning Jamie Lee Curtis likens the Palisades to Gaza, it’s the Emmy-winning Jean Smart with an idea befitting her surname: Spare the world from the televising of self-indulgent award shows and donate the ad revenue to disaster relief.
If only California’s political ruling class could see as clearly through the smoke.
Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institution distinguished policy fellow and former chief speechwriter for California governor Pete Wilson, is the moderator of Hoover’s GoodFellows broadcast on U.S. and world affairs.