The 'Govinator' California here we come?
Higgins, Thomas
Thomas Higgins THE 'GOVINATOR' Report from California 0ssessing the long-term implications for American politics of California's recall election is not without risk. Conventional wisdom got...
...Anyone who thinks that doesn't matter doesn't understand patronage...
...Schwarzenegger was elected with the votes of as many independents and Democrats as conservatives...
...Yet he has governed with as little regard for the opinions of any constituency beyond his own conservative base as any president in my lifetime...
...Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, a decent enough journeyman, but a prime example of the Peter Principle, announced he would run, and promptly sank his chances of winning by taking so much special-interest money from Native American tribes that he shocked even the jaded sensibilities of Californians accustomed to campaign-finance abuses...
...Moderate Republicans in other states may look for opportunities to challenge their party's leadership as well...
...Of course this strategy did not work...
...Conventional wisdom got trashed about every other day during the campaign...
...Proposition 13 and other tax-limitation measures not only crippled California's infrastructure, but led to a reliance on highly regressive alternative taxes, like auto-license fees (the tripling of the car tax was the final nail in Governor Davis's political coffin, just as it was largely responsible for Clinton's only political defeat for reelection as governor of Arkansas in 1980...
...His calculated decisions on issues of parole and capital punishment reflected at least a remarkable insensitivity...
...More people voted in this election than in the last gubernatorial election, which Davis barely survived...
...Perhaps Schwarzenegger would have been elected no matter who his opponent was...
...Passing a state budget in the legislature requires a two-thirds vote, leading to a kind of tyranny of the minority...
...Still, it isn't at all clear that recall elections are a failure...
...At the outset of the recall effort, the leadership of the Democratic Party, including the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the state's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, closed ranks behind Gray Davis and virtually demanded that no other prominent Democrat allow his or her name to be put on the ballot as alternatives in the event the recall initiative won...
...Of course, no one would confuse Sinclair, a socialist, with capitalist Arnold Schwarzenegger...
...The important point, however, is that a majority of Americans now reject any simplistic equation between sexual morality and fitness for office...
...The only comparisons that come to mind are the colorful campaigns of Huey and Earl Long for governor of Louisiana-or the campaign of Upton Sinclair to be governor of California, which provoked a similar media frenzy seventy years ago...
...Despite the dangers of political prognostication, let me venture a few early observations on what this election means for the other forty-nine states, where politics is often more prosaic...
...Bush is far more blameworthy, and the mood of the electorate will likely be far angrier in November 2004 than it is now...
...His relentless fundrais-ing from special interests bred a cynicism and disgust with politics that was deeply corrosive...
...Of course, Schwarzenegger is a fiscal conservative, and while we don't know much about anything else he believes, he is a disciple of his fellow Austrian, Friedrich von Hayek, who argued that markets are the guarantor of liberty...
...It was unlike any election we've seen in more than half a century...
...The weakest of the Democrats broke rank...
...Dianne Feinstein likely would have beaten him...
...Feinstein went so far as to insist that she would not mark the second half of the ballot, only voting no on the recall...
...it was an abdication of responsibility...
...To be sure, social conservatives will not go without a fight, but they may eventually choose to leave the party, as Pat Buchanan did-to no effect...
...But early polling suggested the contrary...
...First, the Schwarzenegger victory may deepen and widen the chasm between social conservatives and moderates within the Republican Party...
...It wasn't just a failed strategy...
...The reason why California is all but ungovernable these days is that a series of ill-conceived referendums and ballot initiatives have hemmed in legislators and policy makers so much that they have little flexibility to respond to crises...
...It wasn't just a lack of charisma, as some apologists would have it...
...Further, it seems likely that this indifference to sexual scandal, so evident during President Bill Clinton's impeachment, is growing...
...If Schwarzenegger governs from the center, as other moderate Republican governors have done successfully, he will further weaken the control that social conservatives have in the Republican Party in California...
...Although the party had a right and even a duty to defend Gray Davis from a recall, it had an even higher obligation to be certain that voters could choose the best-qualified person available as a replacement in the event the recall succeeded...
...He literally did not need the social conservatives, most of whom had their own candidate in State Senator Tom McClintock, a straight-talking, unvarnished Reagan Republican...
...His failure to act to sign long-term contracts for energy supplies gave market power to unscrupulous suppliers with damaging results for the state's economy...
...Third, the private lives of politicians in California are about as important as they are, say, in France...
...The greatest impact of California's recent excitement, however, may yet be felt by President George W. Bush...
...In both cases the offenses were serious and suggested strongly a persistent lack of respect for women, even a kind of personality disorder...
...In the end he had few friends and even fewer defenders...
...He received the blame, even though his role in this recession was a minor one...
...Second, the leadership of the Democratic Party forgot the party's reason for existence...
...Performance trumps indiscretion...
...It is instructive that the same electorate that decisively repudiated him also rejected by the same margins two conservative ballot initiatives that would have further undermined good government in California...
...Now the Democrats go into a presidential election without the governorships of the four largest states in the union: New York, Florida, Texas, and California...
...Fourth, direct democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be...
...Nor would they confuse the high journalistic standards of today's Los Angeles Times with the editorial biases of the paper in the 1930s, when it was a mouthpiece for the conservative views of its owners, the Chandler family...
...Any political party must be about something greater than the fortunes of an individual candidate or a particular constituency...
...Bush ran for the presidency holding himself out as a "compassionate conservative" in domestic policy and a sensible moderate in foreign policy...
...Few Democrats running statewide have finished as poorly in the polls on Election Day...
...Because Schwarzenegger will want to be reelected, his most likely path will be an accommodation with the Democrats who control the legislature, few of whom had any real affection for Governor Gray Davis...
...Despite a media firestorm over Clinton's admitted sexual dalliance and a media firestorm over Schwarzenegger's admitted groping tendencies, in the end the effect on each man's popularity was negligible...
...Moreover, the greatest obstacle to Davis's chances of surviving the recall was the economy...
Vol. 130 • October 2003 • No. 18
