The campaign ads practically write themselves. Gavin Newsom: He’ll do for America what he did for California.

And what, exactly, did he do for California? Well, we have the tent cities and the poop patrols and the rampant crime and the unchecked illegal immigration and the homelessness and the drug abuse and the high taxes and the unaffordable housing and the crumbling infrastructure and the bottom-dwelling public schools and the energy-policy failures and the rolling blackouts and the runaway gas prices and the climate-change hysteria and the electric-vehicle mandates and a bunch of other deep demerits that I’m no doubt forgetting.

Then there was his do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do French Laundry scandal, and his unseemly genuflection toward Communist Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and his appalling lack of preparation and godawful response to the Palisades fire, and perhaps the most damning indictment of all — the mass exodus of everyone from middle-class Californians to the extraordinary innovators and wealth-producers.

But perhaps more than anything else, there’s his borderline-criminal mismanagement of the Golden State’s massive fisc, and his Neroesque fiddling while California’s one-of-a-kind fortune goes up in a wildfire of fraud.

In recent weeks, our Emmy Griffin has covered California’s growing hospice fraud scandal — a scandal that is now, finally, and only because of federal government scrutiny, resulting in arrests. Or are we being too picky when we suggest that a 97% survival rate after five years in a certain hospice facility is a bit suspicious?

The hospice fraud is infuriating enough, given that these facilities are federally funded, and given that these are thus your taxpayer dollars, not just those of stupid Californians. But a recent City Journal report says that the state’s fraud problem is far worse than even Newsom’s harshest critics had imagined. As Chris Rufo, Ryan Thorpe, Kenneth Schrupp, and Haley Strack report:

We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.

Now, admittedly, we’ve all developed an unhealthy tolerance to big numbers like this. As the late Senator Everett Dirksen might’ve said were he dealing in 2026 dollars, $180 billion here, $180 billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

But consider: The annual budget for the entire state of Texas is $169 billion.

This, then, is Newsom’s empire of fraud, and it’s utterly disqualifying. Just imagine if he did for the United States Treasury what he’s done for California’s treasury.

One of the richest troves for the fraudsters was California’s massive unemployment insurance program, whose spigots Newsom opened up fully during the COVID-19 pandemic, when his state’s shutdowns proved ruinous to the economy and the citizenry. As fraud specialist Haywood Talcove put it, “They literally suspended all of the rules for the [program]. … It was very intentional. They knew what they were doing. But it caught up to them because it just got so out of control.”

How out-of-control was it? Let’s just say that when a Romanian-led fraud ring siphons $5 million out of your state’s unemployment coffers, you’ve got a fraud problem.

Medi-Cal, which is California’s massive Medicaid program, its program for government-funded healthcare for the poor, and its budget has risen “from $93.5 billion the year before Newsom took office to $196.7 billion in the current annual budget,” even though California’s resident population declined by 0.2% during that same period. Nothing to see here, folks!

As the City Journal team writes, “Newsom may have inherited a bad situation, but his actions have made it worse.” Indeed, California schemin’ has become part of the state’s culture — so much so that Newsom’s chief of staff, Dana Williamson, has been charged with allegedly “siphoning campaign and COVID-19 recovery funds into her and an associate’s pockets.”

If the states are laboratories of republican democracy, then we can surely get a sense of the leadership capabilities of the governors who run them. And here, Gavin Newsom is no exception. Whether he likes it or not, he’s been auditioning for the presidency ever since November 6, 2018, when he was elected governor. And again, he’s disqualified himself by his awful leadership of a train-wreck state.

And yet.

Democrats — because they’re mostly women — tend to be suckers for a good-looking, smooth-talking guy, and Newsom is certainly that. So no matter how appallingly awful his leadership of our nation’s largest and most important state has been, Newsom still has a slugger’s chance.

But for every single white childless cat lady who swoons whenever the Oleaginous One speaks, there are doubtless other women, sensible American Patriots all, who recoil at the prospect of a Newsom presidency. Which means that women alone can’t propel Newsom into the White House. He’ll need at least a modicum of male votes.

And here I ask: How can any red-blooded American man possibly cast a vote for a commander-in-chief who crosses his legs like that?