By Jeremy Lott on 10.9.03 @ 12:02AM
This vote registered on the Richter scale.
California tends to embrace change on a seismic scale. For
years, one style of politics is the only way of doing
things, and then voters decide to shake things up a bit. Tarnished
Staters get sick of something (e.g., riots, high property taxes,
unchecked illegal immigration, affirmative action), and send a
system shock to the state's political movers and, er, shakers.
The recall election was at least an
8.5. Forty-three of 58 counties voted to send Gray Davis
packing, and many of those counties that voted to keep the governor
did so with clothespin firmly fastened. Recall was only narrowly
defeated in Los Angeles, and the rest of the no vote hugged the
central and northern coastline (Davis' strongest support,
unsurprisingly, came from San Francisco). The voters were
determined, Network-like, to tell Sacramento that they
were mad as hell, and not… oh, but let's not start with the
clichés.
That Schwarzenegger and McClintock together managed to get more
than 60 percent of the vote should be heartening, really, except
the only serious Democrat in the race, other than Davis, was Cruz
Bustamante -- a man Reason editor Matt Welch
described as a "completely unremarkable toad looking man who has a
lot of stupid ideas." He promised to raise taxes if elected,
refused to distance himself from the Chicano activism of his
student days, and carried only a bare majority of the Latino
vote.
I don't mean to belittle Herr Schwarzenegger's accomplishment,
however. His climb to power, starting with the Riordan fake-out on
Jay Leno and continuing relentlessly during numerous missteps and
bimbo aftershocks, was one of the most inspiring examples of
Machiavellian politicking I've ever witnessed.
What's more, it seems to me that's what voters loved
about the governor-elect: He really is an S.O.B. whose unrestrained
ambition has made him a very rich, very famous man. As I watched
him swat away reporters' questions like they were flies, it
occurred to me that (a) he really does think he's better than us,
and (b) people might think, hey, that's the kind of man who can
get things done.
And -- who knows? -- he might. Right now, Arnold's politics
remain up in the air. His campaign has issued a smattering of
policy proposals, but on the campaign trail, he relied mostly on
anti-Davisisms and boilerplate platitudes. From the start of the
campaign through election night, he ran a thoroughly vacuous
campaign -- and I use that as a description, not an insult.
Schwarzenegger's genius was to recognize that an electoral
earthquake was about to occur, and to position himself
accordingly.
Now comes the fun part: governing. The soon to be installed
executive has two years to put the state back in order -- cut
spending; reverse the naked handouts of the outgoing
administration; take on some powerful constituencies, including
popular ones -- before he faces the next election. Arnold has a
mandate, granted, but those tend to be fast burning fuses. The
legislature, though currently stunned, is not likely to be
cooperative, which could lead to one of those make-or-break
confrontations rather quickly. Will he play the part of Clinton, or
Newt? Also, if readers thought the California media was out to get
him before the election, just wait.
Finally, there is the issue of this column's repeated -- and, it
turns out, wrong -- prediction that the Democrats would win. As one
reader wrote, "You've got a lot to answer for!" The accusation, as
I understand it, is that I got carried away in the anti-Arnold
fervor of this fine publication and allowed it to cloud my
political judgment. More likely, my analysis tried to be too
clever, and ignored the real anger of Californians. In other words,
I failed to feel their pain.
topics:
Taxes, Immigration, Oil
