Don't Laugh at California

...It is a litigation capital and has high taxes...

...And when the five top candidates debated for the only time last Wednesday at California State University, Sacramento, a quarter of the state watched as if their lifestyles depended on it...

...airport on September 13, a huge banner behind him read: The Sovereign Nation of the AGUA CALIENTE BAND OF CAHUILLA INDIANS California Republican Party That last line was a cut-out strip that had been sloppily scotch-taped onto the sign—right over the line that said (doubtless), "California Democratic Party...

...I've said I'm in this to the finish...

...It has the worst credit rating in the nation...

...His base is indeed alive and well and politically active . . . but it is living in Idaho and Nevada...

...But because McClintock is living in the era of pay-to-play, he needs tons more money than such small donors can supply...

...They are delighted to see the trend in new voter registrations since May: 120,000 first-time voters are 45 percent Republican, 40 percent "declined to state," and only 10 percent Democratic...

...Schwarzenegger had emptied his cartridge of rehearsed gags 10 minutes into the debate last week, and for the remaining 80 he sounded shockingly like a typical Sacramento politician...

...Of course, none of that guarantees that we'll like the new politics better than the politics it replaces...

...An even more amazing new law mandates anti-homophobic sensitivity training for foster parents, and bars any would-be foster parent from steering his child away from his proclaimed "gender identity...

...McClintock noted in the debate that he is the only major candidate who has signed a no-tax pledge, the only one who supports Proposition 54 (which bans racial data-collection), the only one who is pro-life, and the only one who supports the right to bear arms...

...If this were 1982, one would be looking at Tom McClin-tock as potential presidential timber...

...This is a pivotal election, and it is being conducted with about as much seriousness as a free people can reasonably bring to such an endeavor...

...McClintock's deputy campaign manager John Stoos says that the campaign has mobilized California's small donors, which is quite believable, and that he is raising money over the Internet faster than Howard Dean, which is questionable...

...This he did, but in the most canned, superficial, and uninspiring fashion possible...

...They note that their party has done well with intellectually underestimated actors in the past, most notably Senator George Murphy and Ronald Reagan...

...Indian gambling interests are now the biggest special interest in the state, and this week four former agents of the California attorney general's office said the Division of Gambling Control systematically undermined enforcement of corruption and embezzlement laws at the state's Indian casinos...

...A few weeks ago, Davis signed a law—not in the statehouse but at a ceremony to which only the minority press was invited, held in a small motor-vehicle registry in East Los Angeles—that permits illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses...

...He has the policy mastery of Bill Clinton, and brags that he will use his knowledge of the inner workings of Sacramento to short-circuit every Democratic program he can...

...But that doesn't mean the recall can be dismissed as sour grapes...

...Film actor and political neophyte Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Nixon/Rove-Republican candidate...

...Buzzing around the party's convention on its opening morning were three Republican county chairmen from conservative central California, who asked to remain nameless...

...Republicans are rallying to Schwarzenegger before they have any idea what they're getting...

...You can even say that this race is being run according to the very pay-to-play rules that it was meant to curb...

...It is running a $38 billion deficit, higher than all the other states combined...

...Republicans, perhaps unwilling to entertain the possibility that the public has tired of them, are positing that the public has tired of politics in general...

...There is paradox on paradox here...

...Ladies and Gentlemen, don't you think we should go and get that state back...

...To do this, he says, it is "essential we have someone who already knows this government intimately...

...Certain journalists with an esthetic interest in the campaign have hoped he would "break free of his handlers and run a truly independent campaign...

...Senate against Barbara Boxer next fall...

...McClintock understands what this means for his state but is a bit dim about what it means for his ability to become governor...

...Cruz Bustamante, the Democrats' only candidate to replace Davis, played it so cool throughout the debate...

...The state, recall proponents say, has been taken over by special interests, who control the government through their campaign contributions...

...And when he made what was perhaps the biggest speech of the season, before a banquet of Republicans at L.A...

...After the effort to impeach Bill Clinton and the intransigence of Democrats still stewing over the 2000 Florida recounts, there are points to be raised about Americans' unwillingness to abide by the result of an election—since the lion's share of the misdeeds for which Davis might be ousted were committed before Cal-ifornians returned him to office last November...

...I remember that state," he said to the assembled crowd at the recent Republican convention...

...Schwarzenegger is running as the Terminator...

...In an early September speech he even reminisced fondly about having been drawn to the GOP by watching Nixon debate Humphrey in 1968...

...Detailing the varied workings of pay-to-play over the past five years would make a book...

...California blew its chance to throw Davis out in 2002, reelecting him 47 percent to 42 percent...

...But McClintock has a rather tormented relationship with the U.S...

...While the Schwarzenegger campaign had called each of them to enlist their help, the McClintock campaign hadn't called at all...

...If you can find a more unequivocal way of phrasing that, tell me, and I'll use it...

...Taking a page out of Cruz's playbook, he was the beneficiary last week of an $850,000 ad expenditure by the Morongo Band of Mission Indians...

...Not Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard...

...But the Republican party is split in two...

...BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL If there is one thing non-Californians need to know about this campaign," said veteran GOP strategist Allan Hoffenblum towards the end of the mid-September state Republican convention in Los Angeles, "it's that it's not a 'circus.' It's not a 'spectacle.' It's not a joke...

...In Bustamante, California has the real possibility of replacing a recalled governor with one who is even less popular...

...McClintock has said he will not withdraw from the race...

...But there's a difference...

...His rhetoric is absolutely stirring, particularly when he describes the California of low taxes, brand-new infrastructure, and civic involvement that his parents came to in the 1960s...

...But to describe the recall, which will take place on October 7, as some kind of joke is frivolous...

...It has a worker's compensation program that operates as a stealth welfare program, subsidizing people who complain of angst and malaise, while offering stingily low benefits for the truly injured...

...census...

...Did Arnold win by not losing or lose by not winning...

...I lived there...

...Mayoral, senatorial, and gubernatorial candidates complain that news shows seldom devote more than 30 seconds to politics—45 if you're lucky—and only well into the show, somewhere below pet rescues and Beyonce Knowles's cleavage...

...Let's content ourselves with the week before this magazine went to press, which was not atypical...

...But it's more accurate to use a more Californian polarity: State senator Tom McClintock is a Reagan Republican, but he inhabits a party that is directed by the more Nixon-Republican strategy of Karl Rove, who prefers to snipe at his opponents' base by co-opting their issues...

...Davis may be the most egregious practitioner among recent governors, but this "pay to play" system, as it's called, is rife in all corners of government...

...And it was taken from us...

...But you cannot accuse Californians of exaggerating when they describe themselves as being on the political brink...

...Last fall, California conservatives fought tooth and nail to secure the governor's nomination for the uncharismatic Bill Simon, freezing out Rove's candidate, the former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, and turning a likely victory into a five-point loss...

...It's unsurprising then, that Lt...

...You lived there...

...Tom just doesn't have a big enough operation to have people make those calls...

...He is fond of throwing into his stump speech the datum that in the 1990s, for the first time in California's history, more native-born Americans fled the state than settled there...

...The rest is silence, or, at best, platitudes on how important children are to him, and how important it is to make the economy grow...

...There have been understandable worries that the anti-Davis forces— particularly Darrell Issa, the multimillionaire congressman who donated millions of his private fortune to hire signature gatherers—have been a bit too professional in their harnessing of popular outrage, in a way that the framers of California's recall laws a century ago would not have countenanced...

...I vill tooominate it...

...I'm glad I have the whole press corps here," he said at the convention...

...But Schwarzenegger is not a "truly independent" candidate...

...Last Thursday, Republican leaders in the assembly and virtually all the county chairmen closed ranks behind Schwarzenegger...

...Ordinarily, the answer to such problems is to Throw the Bum Out...

...It was real...

...The explanation for that is simple, say people close to McClintock...

...he owes his position to the desire of Republicans to capture the governorship—and he will get votes only from pro-recall forces, who are mostly Republican...

...Reagan used the familiarity his film roles won him to gain an audience for a well-thought-out political platform...

...So Republicans are threatening McClintock with the stick of a primary challenge in his (state) Senate campaign next spring, and (according to some but not all sources) offering him the carrot of a Schwarzenegger-backed run for the (U.S...

...There are things to be said about the information economy, and whether it has bred a customer-is-always-right expectation that anything we dislike can be changed now—fine in an economy, perilous in a democracy...

...Bustamante has an appealing sugary baritone and a Reaganesque smile, but he has funded his campaign with millions of dollars from Indian gambling interests, and backs virtually every important piece of legislation that Davis has signed...

...We haven't a clue what he's thinking himself...

...Outsiders tend to look at the split as a social one: between "economic" conservatives and "social" conservatives (like the pro-lifers from the Survivors movement who hold signs outside Schwarzenegger rallies reading "Hasta la vista, babies...

...So they're offering entertainment instead...

...The coalition on which the California Democratic party was built is breaking down, and is being replaced by a coalition of special interests...

...His position on the driver's license law...

...And Davis locked the state into a series of contracts in 2001 that will guarantee California expensive energy for decades...

...He is sticking to his Republican guns, and Republicans may not forgive him for it...

...But that's because he doesn't have a big enough base...

...They warn that he is turning into the Ralph Nader of the Republican party...

...Californians have grown convinced in the past year that their entire political system is short-circuited, and that nothing less than a systemic rewiring will fix it...

...Social interests, as well as commercial ones, take advantage of this system, and consistently force through laws that Californians can't stand...

...We can't tell, because we haven't a clue what the people who support him are thinking...

...He has an itemized plan for undoing virtually all of the 38 percent that spending has increased under Davis's governorship...

...For all that, the GOP's Hoffenblum is right...

...so this time...

...All were leaning Schwarzenegger...

...As such, the McClintock wing of the party has been in bad odor with the Republican operatives bent on victory...

...Faced with a united Republican party, he would get clobbered...

...Every night, the networks lead their news programs with 8 to 10 minutes of recall coverage, even when something blows up in Iraq...

...By now the whole country knows California's problems...

...There has been a lot of nationwide bemuse-ment at the campaign to subject Governor Gray Davis to a recall vote one year into his second term...

...They were miffed at McClintock on a personal level...

...You can fault the recall proponents, and you can ridicule the 135 candidates vying to replace Davis...

...The owners of the NBA's Sacramento Kings gave a $100,000 check to Davis's anti-recall committee the very week he was due to consider a bill that would require taxpayers to fund a new arena for the team...

...The conventional wisdom is that Schwarzenegger had to appeal to these new voters by using last Wednesday's debate to convey depth on policy matters...

...Anyone who has covered a campaign in California has heard the perennial complaint of candidates: No one in California cares about politics...