How can Newsom remain relevant? Be the new FDR

Governor should embrace values that too many Democrats have abandoned in the age of Trump

- ANITA CHABRIA COLUMNIST

MARIO TAMA Getty Images A MOTORIST waits to receive food at a drive-through distribution center.

Proposition 50 has passed, and with it goes the warm spotlight of never-ending press coverage that aspiring presidential contender Gavin Newsom has enjoyed.

What’s an ambitious governor to do?

My vote? Take inspiration from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who not only pulled America through the Depression, but rebuilt trust in democracy with a truly big-tent government that offered concrete benefits to a wide and diverse swath of society.

It’s time to once again embrace the values — inclusiveness, equity, dignity for all—that too many Democrats have expeditiously dropped to appease MAGA.

Not only did FDR make good on helping the average person, he put a sign on it (literally — think of all those Work Projects Administration logos that still grace our manhole covers and sidewalks) to make sure everyone knew that big, bold government wasn’t the problem, but the solution—despite what rich men wanted the public to believe.

As he was sworn in for his second term (of four; take that, President Trump!), FDR said he was “determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern,” because the “test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Roosevelt created jobs paid for by government; he created Social Security; he created a coalition that improbably managed to include both Black Americans everywhere and white Southerners, northern industrialists and rural farmers. In the end, he created a United States where people could try, fail and have the helping hand to get back up again — the real underpinning of the American dream.