Gavin Newsom invoked Nietzsche. I thought of ‘Blazing Saddles.’
Until recently, everything I knew about Friedrich Nietzsche came from two movies.
“The Abyss” opens with his warning that when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. My other exposure came from “Blazing Saddles.” During a chaotic town meeting, Howard Johnson tries to elevate the proceedings.
A compelling why does not make the why righteous. Conviction supplies endurance. It does not supply morality.
“You know, Nietzsche says, ‘Out of chaos comes order.’”
Olson Johnson replies, “Oh, blow it out your ass, Howard.”
Mel Brooks provided the more memorable lesson.
So when California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) quoted Nietzsche while discussing a possible presidential run, I thought of Olson Johnson immediately.
In a PBS "NewsHour" interview, Newsom was asked what might keep him from running in 2028. He answered that he would need a “big enough why” to endure almost any “how,” invoking Nietzsche, and said he would have to look voters in the eye with a compelling vision.
When a governor reaching for the White House quotes Nietzsche on endurance, he is not confessing limits. He is announcing appetite.
I am not a Nietzsche scholar. I am a caregiver. I have spent 40 years straining against the limits of my own power, and I have learned how easily “responsibility” becomes a contest of wills. I have wanted the last word at home and called it love. Fatigue cooled that appetite more than virtue ever did.
I have enough trouble governing myself. Men eager to govern everybody else no longer impress me. They weary me.
Newsom has been busy making the rounds. He went fly-fishing in Montana with Jake Tapper and talked about 2028. He spoke at the United Nations. He met with fire survivors in Altadena.
None of that is scandalous. Ambitious governors do ambitious-governor things. But California has already handed Newsom a why.
Only 19% of California households could afford the state’s median-priced existing single-family home in the second quarter of 2026. The median price was $916,750, and a household needed an annual income of $228,400 to qualify for the typical payment.
People still sleep outside. Fire survivors are still rebuilding. And U-Haul ranked California last among the states for net one-way customer growth in 2025 — the sixth straight year it finished at the bottom.
When U-Haul starts sending thank-you notes to the governor, he ought to ask why.
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We call it public service. How often is it public power wearing better clothes? A compelling why does not make the why righteous. Conviction supplies endurance. It does not supply morality.
To be fair to Newsom, the aphorism is genuinely Nietzsche’s. It appears in “Twilight of the Idols.” Quoting it does not make Newsom a disciple of Nietzsche any more than quoting G.K. Chesterton makes me … well, Chesterton.
But the actual Nietzsche was less greeting-card. In “The Antichrist,” he asks, “What is good?” and answers: “Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.” At least he labeled the package.
The desire for a bigger seat is neither new nor rare. Jesus had just told His disciples that He would be condemned, flogged, and killed when James and John asked for the seats at His right and left.
“You do not know what you are asking,” He told them. The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over others, but "it shall not be so among you.” Whoever would be great must become a servant. Then He spoke of giving His own life as a ransom.
James and John wanted the best seats in the kingdom. At Calvary, the places on His right and left went to two criminals. That was not the seating chart they had in mind.
In the middle of the night, when someone is hurting and a dressing needs changing, nobody cares how important I think I am. No podium waits. No national why arrives. There is only the next necessary thing: wash the wound, change the dressing, dry the tears, do the laundry, get out the mop.
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Politicians who cannot stand work at that scale keep looking for a bigger room so that the work can stay abstract. Nietzsche offers me nothing in those hours. Christ offers everything.
Chesterton wrote that original sin is “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” I do not need Washington to test the claim. I provide evidence myself. So do men who cannot sit still in the office they already hold.
If Newsom wants to look voters in the eye, he already has people in front of him. Californians gave him a job, a mighty how, and enough need to exhaust any honest servant.
If he still needs a bigger why, that tells me something about which hunger is doing the asking.
Olson Johnson had the right response the first time.
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