It’s an annual phenomenon, rather like migrating birds: Every
winter, flocks of well-known Eastern columnists turn up in
California to write penetrating analysis of the great enigma on the
West Coast. It’s a vacation from the blizzards in their hometowns
of New York and Washington and Boston.
It’s an annual phenomenon, rather like migrating birds: Every winter, flocks of well-known Eastern columnists turn up in California to write penetrating analysis of the great enigma on the West Coast. It’s a vacation from the blizzards in their hometowns of New York and Washington and Boston.
For their readers, though, it’s generally another chance to become misled about this state, which usually leads the nation in everything from smog control to tax policy.
Now, as a recall drive against Gov. Gray Davis threatens to take America into a new era of direct action against unsatisfactory and sometimes corrupt political practices, some Easterners are taking rare summertime potshots at the Golden State.
But warm weather has not given them a better understanding of California.
Take William Safire, the New York Times op-ed columnist, former Richard Nixon speechwriter and language analyst extraordinaire. “Not a year after re-electing (Davis), fickle residents of this Democratic suzerainty are suffering from voter remorse.” Later, he observes that “knee-jerk voting leads to profound misjudgment.”
Does he realize that knee-jerk analysis also leads to profound misjudgment?
Meanwhile, his colleague Maureen Dowd, usually given to skewering presidents, writes that the recall “has become another way big money can warp the system.”
And the Washington Post, perhaps leery of paying travel costs for an extra trip by one of its own pundits, engages John Ellwood, a Berkeley professor of public policy, for an analysis. He wonders if the recall is “La-La Land (going) through one of its periodic episodes of running amok.” He opines that if this recall succeeds, the tactic will become “another weapon of political combat,” presumably to be repeated early and often.
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer warns that “Ugly scarcely describes what is about to unfold …”
Foreigners are negative, too. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, editorializes inaccurately that California was settled largely by “pioneers from Northern England, Western Scotland and Ulster” who brought with them a “fondness for rabble rousing … now transferred to the electoral arena.” Perhaps the Times has California confused with the Carolinas, which really were settled by folks from those parts, but it’s still an odd claim from a paper sharing ownership with the constantly rabble-rousing New York Post.
None of these columnists and newspapers understands what’s going on. All presume that last fall’s election was fair and honest.
Let’s take them back in time. One choice for Californians last fall was a self-funded Republican multi-millionaire (William Simon Jr.) trying to buy the top political job in the nation’s largest state when he hadn’t even voted in most elections of the prior 10 years. The other was an incumbent governor who lapped up every corporate and labor union campaign dollar he could and appeared to shape public policy to aid his benefactors.
Simon made gaffe after gaffe on the campaign trail, some of which may have been deliberate misrepresentations. Davis got caught in the Oracle Corp. software scandal where the company donated $25,000 to his campaign just hours after receiving a no-bid $91 million contract from the state. There were charges of similar episodes.
The result: public loathing of both major candidates and a record-low voter turnout. Almost 2 million fewer Californians voted in 2002 than in the previous gubernatorial election of 1998.
The non-voters, including many who previously voted every chance they got, couldn’t stomach either choice. A fair election? Not to them, when candidates were chosen in primaries driven purely by big donations or the candidates’ own dollars.
Many voters were left pining for change. Removing Davis became the symbol of this deep desire. But that’s below the radar screen of pundits who spout their wisdom after talking to no one but established politicians, consultants or fellow journalists.
Voters aren’t suffering remorse, as Safire said. They want something better than the system that produced last year’s choices. Yes, one big-money contributor speeded up the recall petition campaign. But no, that money did not warp the system, as Dowd said. Rather, it allowed the system to work faster.
It’s also unlikely that recalls will become common. Getting a recall here requires signatures from registered voters numbering 12 percent of the total vote in the previous election. The threshold is higher in many other states. The 12 percent figure was relatively easy to reach this year only because so many usual voters didn’t bother last fall. Voter disgust, then, facilitated the recall, an appropriate consequence for a governor who inspired much of that distaste.
But if voters go back to their normal turnouts, the level to qualify future recalls will be higher by hundreds of thousands of signatures.
And how does the Plain-Dealer know the outcome will be any uglier than permitting Davis to continue on? If there’s a new governor, the picture could soon become prettier.
All of which means that any Californian would be crazy to heed the advice of outside pundits and analysts, whether in print or on radio or TV. As usual when it comes to California politics, lifestyle and business, they’re blowing smoke.
